


Don't You Know Who I Think I Am?

by MzMinola



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Child Neglect, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, Gen, Implied Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Underage, Not Beta Read, POV Third Person Omniscient, Satire, Spawn of Voldemort, implied/referenced ritual sex, murder mention, tag added because Tom Voldemort Riddle lies about who he is a LOT, the timeline goes BOING, the writer has too much fun, the writer is writing as fast as they can
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 40,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26020093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MzMinola/pseuds/MzMinola
Summary: Tom Riddle fathers nearly two dozen children before dying the first time. Their lives could go a number of ways, but in a universe where they all exist, the most likely outcome is not tragedy, but farce.
Relationships: Tom Riddle/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 211
Kudos: 100





	1. 1940's - A Penny For Your Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to wolfiso for helping workshop the big family reveal plot mechanism, and alexmaybe (and Fall Out Boy) for title help.

When Tom Riddle is a young man, he’s very disdainful of a lot of people. His teachers, his dead parents, Muggles, other wizards...basically anyone who isn’t himself. But he  _ is _ charming, conventionally attractive for the two cultures in which he lives, and quite practiced at hiding his disdain. So when he feels like it, it’s not much trouble for him to wrap people around his finger and get what he wants, whatever that may happen to be. Except when it  _ is _ trouble, such as collecting Hogwarts Founders’ relics, in which case he happily resorts to murder.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

In the late nineteen-forties, Tom Riddle finds himself a legal adult in the wizarding world, and thus unsupervised in the use of his magic outside of school for the first time in his life. He promptly sets about with a combination of social hacking and magic to make himself a half dozen fake identities in the Muggle world with which to commit fraud. It’s a way of making himself financially secure that makes him feel clever.

He then just as promptly goes and does something rather  _ unclever _ three summers in a row, because he’s seventeen, and then eighteen, and then finally nineteen, and despite having the heavy weight of a classmate’s death on his fractured soul, not yet very good at applying long term consequences to himself.

He has summer flings under his fake identities and gets three different young women knocked up. Which he hadn’t meant to do. And as we have mentioned, Tom is rather disdainful of his parents, who (being weak and useless, in his opinion) left him penniless in an orphanage. Tom has to be  _ better _ than them. Which means he can’t just waltz off like nothing happened, despite being perfectly capable of doing so. So two summers in a row, confronted with a rather miffed young woman who hadn’t been able to reach him by post because his fake names were those of Muggle soldiers who didn’t exist, he gets married. And then fakes his death. His widows will receive pensions and his daughters will be legitimate and not carry the stigma of bastardry, and look, the widows even get everyone feeling  _ sorry _ for them because their young lover had tragically died in the war! Everybody wins!

He never actually finds out about the third one, because that summer fling is a post-graduation one rather than an in-between school years one, and when it ends he doesn’t go back.

~

Tom Marvolo Riddle’s eldest child is born on April 1st, 1944, and named for her birth month. Her mother Agnes affectionately calls her an “April Fool” when she’s being silly, and her classmates and later colleagues joke that she has “fool’s luck” when coincidence and chance turn out in her favor. Mostly coincidence and chance turn out in her favor because she’s quick on her feet to take  _ advantage _ of her good luck, and roll with the bad.

She wonders about her father. Had he been proud of fighting in the war? Had he been scared? She stares into the mirror sometimes, trying to subtract her mother from her face, looking for him; Agnes doesn’t have any photographs of Corporal Tom Griddle.

Mostly though, April Griddle gets on with life. She has a kind stepfather, and three younger half-siblings whom she loves very much. She misses them while attending Hogwarts, and it’s a desire to protect them that leads her to study curse breaking and creature hunting. It’s the recommendations of her professors that get her an Auror apprenticeship, despite the prejudice against Muggleborns in the Ministry. And then it’s her hard work and knack for landing on her feet that get her loaned out more and more to Auror departments first across the channel, and then across the pond. She even faces her own father in battle once in the 1970’s, not that she knows it, but her main focus is stopping his non-human allies and the creatures he controls.

When Tom “Lord Voldemort” Riddle rather explosively vanishes on Halloween 1981, April Griddle is off in New Jersey dealing with a nest of vampiric raccoons that have been gorging on magical waste. It’s an interesting job that lands her in more than one dumpster and ultimately saves several lives. When word reaches her of Voldemort’s defeat, she comes home, hands in her resignation to the Auror department, spends a lovely few weeks catching up with her mother, stepfather, younger siblings, and those siblings’ growing families. Then she goes back to America to accept a job offer. They have a fairly extensive vampire problem over there.

(It doesn’t hurt that nobody in America bats an eye at her chatting with snakes.)

April Griddle never dates or marries or has children, she’s not interested in any of that. She has her family, colleagues, friends, and a job protecting people. It’s a hard job, and she’s good at it. She’s happy.

Someday she’ll even take on a rookie vampire hunter with a mysterious past as her trainee.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves again.

~

May Green, born on May 1st, 1945, never looks for Captain Thomas Green in the mirror; she’s a dead ringer for her mother Betty, so there’s not much point. She also never unknowingly faces him in battle. She has just as much of a protective streak as her friend and classmate (and half-sister) April, it just doesn’t come out in dueling or creature hunting or curse breaking. It comes out in growing plants into layered wards around homes, weaving shield charms into clothes, always keeping the kettle on the stove to sit someone down with a warm cup of tea. If you want a safehouse, you go to May Green. She gets people through the war with a couch to stay on overnight, a hot meal to get them through the day, and wards so strong that Bellatrix Lestrange literally bounces off them like a tennis ball.

In the middle of the war May’s girlfriend Jeanie proposes. They can’t get a marriage license, not in the Muggle world or the wizarding one, but Jeanie’s a Muggle professor of history and folklore and digs up some old ceremonies. Their friends come out to a lovely meadow on a beautiful day, and they jump over a bonfire that evening with their wrists tied together with ribbon, both holding May’s wand.

After the war ends they ask the teenager who’s been staying on their couch every summer since running away from his Death Eater parents if he’d like them to be his mums forever, not just the summers. The answer’s an enthusiastic yes. Then he brings home a younger classmate who also needs some mums, and things snowball from there. They have a half dozen officially adopted children now, and another half dozen unofficially. Interestingly, everyone who stays eventually starts being able to understand the snakes out in the garden.

~

Clara Lehrer is pretty damn cross with that charmer Tommy Silverson running off to who knows where before she even realized she’d missed her bloody period. It isn’t like the damn thing’s  _ regular _ with all the bloody rationing. Sodding fickle arse. Her parents are extremely supportive though, and her daughter Mara is born on March 15th, 1946. Mara grows up with a strong belief in doing  _ right _ by other people, and very little patience for charm, wordplay, and anything else that looks like an attempt to weasel out of responsibility. If you want a good example of why the symbol of Hufflepuff is a badger, and why that’s terrifying, you don’t need to look further than Mara Lehrer.

Much like April, Mara gets into the Auror training program at the recommendations of her professors. Unlike April, she doesn’t get lent out to other countries’ ministries or focus much on creatures. No, Mara stays in Britain and focuses on wizards. She doesn’t bring in as many magical lawbreakers as her colleagues, but the ones she does bring in find all of the charges filed against them  _ stick. _ Mara is meticulous. Thorough. If the entire Ministry weren’t such a mess of bigotry, corruption, and Death Eater infiltration, she probably would’ve nailed Voldemort before the war erupted into the open.

As it is, she spends several years contemplating resignation, always deciding against it because she thinks she can fix the problems from within. In the mid 1970’s an Imperious’d Auror department head fires her over a small paperwork error he had to manufacture, and Mara immediately presents herself in Albus Dumbledore’s office. The Order of the Phoenix is  _ very _ happy to have her. She’s  _ relentless. _ She hexes Voldemort as he’s  _ running away from her _ in a fight that takes place on her birthday. She doesn’t even take a break from fighting Death Eaters for a honeymoon when she and her sweetheart Amos Diggory get married, or for her pregnancy, though giving birth itself takes her out of the field for a few weeks. It turns out that making a whole new human being is damned hard. A lot of her mother Clara’s anger towards that weasel Tommy Silverson for not  _ being there _ during it makes more sense. Not that it hadn’t made sense before. But the understanding is more visceral now.

(In another timeline, Mara’s father is going to kill her son, his own grandson, and none of them will ever know. But in this timeline we’re looking at, in which Riddle’s carelessness catches up to him all at once, Mara’s son lives.)


	2. 1950's - A Dollar For Your Insights

Tom doesn’t know about his fourth and fifth daughters any more than he knew about his third. He travels through Europe on business and for research in the 1950’s, going back and forth quite a lot over several years. If he has a few adventurous encounters during that time, well, can he really be expected to keep in touch?

Appoline’s veela mother doesn’t care about Tom knowing he has a daughter any more than he does, though she’s still happy said daughter falls in love with a man who sticks around. Who  _ marries _ Appoline. And she’s so proud of her oldest granddaughter Fleur for getting accepted into Beauxbatons Academy that she gifts Fleur with her own hair with which to craft her wand.

Zora’s mother Ana cares a great deal more about her daughter knowing her father, what with how much family she lost while fighting Grindelwald, but that charming English bastard gave her a name so false the owls can’t track him down. She’s pissed. If he ever shows his face in Bulgaria again he’ll have to meet his daughter from a hospital bed, she’ll blast him with so many hexes! Zora’s own son Viktor jokes that Grandmother Ana ought to be a chaperone on Durmstrang’s trip to Hogwarts, so she can look for him.

~

We’ve now progressed far enough along the timeline to shift genres. From stories looking at Tom Riddle’s children and grandchildren, to those of Voldemort.

The two men are the same character, as we know, yet this makes a difference. We draw closer to the prophecy and thus those involved in it. Not for those who thrice defied him to be born yet, but far enough that offspring whose school careers would overlap with theirs have been.

So we shall step away from relatively mundane daughters of Tom Riddle, who may be witches and have interesting lives, but who are not particularly affected by the true identity of their absent or dead fathers. Characters whom we could easily expect to find in an Auror or Magical Law Enforcement procedural, or an OC-centric crossover fic, whose parentage is simply an example of Tom Riddle existing as an ordinary man, and quite possibly not even a plot point.

(Though the TriWizard Champions all being his grandchildren likely serves as a joke, in some comedic piece.)

No, we shall now move on to the spawn of Lord Voldemort, who sit upon their stories as beautiful gravity wells, warping the canon around them.


	3. 1950's - A Fortune For Your Disaster

Arachne Black goes through a new last name every few years in the Muggle registries, but never changes from her original in the Ministry of Magic’s. Why bother? She’s just going to murder her wealthy husband as soon as it’s convenient and everyone who’s anyone knows it. Yes, yes, outright anti-Muggle bigotry is gauche right now, after that business with Grindelwald, but that doesn’t mean the Ministry is going to bother her over some spousal deaths the Muggle authorities sadly wrote off as natural causes. It’s not like her husbands have wizarding families to raise a stink over it.

Her friend Voldemort, whom she calls Vee because she doesn’t believe in letting men get too full of themselves, says with all the social engineering she’s doing she could be stealing three times as much money without doing so much murder. Which is a  _ ridiculous _ thing for him to say, considering how much  _ he _ enjoys murder. Honestly Arachne thinks he only says it because he enjoys criticising people.

Vee’s a good friend to call on for efficiently cutting up corpses for potions ingredients, or to recommend books on obscure Dark Arts rituals, or performing said rituals when they require a partner. On two particularly memorable occasions he helps her out with ones that use fertility magic, and buzzes off when she tells him his offer of assistance in ensuring the results are cared for is unnecessary.

Voldemort only made the offer because it seemed polite and he doesn’t want to lose Arachne as an ally. Voldemort cares a lot less about proving himself better than his parents than Tom Riddle did. He doesn’t even bother telling the two girls he’s their father, when they’re old enough to understand such things. He’s an ally of their mother’s in the fight to preserve and explore the Dark Arts, and that’s all they need to know.

Cyllene Black is conceived on May Day 1955, and born in early February of 1956. She’s a powerful witch, whose spells come out even stronger when the moon is full or high.

Echo Black is conceived on the summer solstice of 1957, and born April 1st, 1958. She’s not as powerful as her sister, though her spells come out stronger than most witches’ when the sun is shining at its zenith.

That’s the thing about the Black sisters; Echo lives down to her name. Anything that Cyllene is, Echo is too, but...not as much. Cyllene’s thick dark hair catches the light and draws the eye no matter how it’s styled. Echo’s hair just sort of exists. Cyllene is tall, Echo is average height. Cyllene’s figure is striking, Echo’s could be if she ever took her mother up on the offer of certain potions and rituals. Cyllene is invited to join the Slug Club, and Echo tags along. Cyllene astounds all her professors and exam proctors with the practical tests of her magic, Echo passes. The only place they come out equal in their teen years is  _ written _ homework and exams.

The other thing about them is that whole moon and sun thing? Yeah, totally symbolic imagery on the writer’s part. Echo is uncomfortable with the Dark Arts her entire life, and despite being sorted into Slytherin (like every other Black to attend Hogwarts while Professor Slughorn was there, aside from Sirius) spends her Hogwarts years coming firmly over to the side of “Muggles are people too,” and “Murdering people for personal gain is wrong.” Cyllene, meanwhile, wholly accepts their mother’s stance that witches are better than Muggles, and anyone rejecting the Dark Arts is just a squeamish baby or idiot reactionary, and that the Black family in particular is better than everyone else in the magical world.

A brief note on timing: Cyllene’s Hogwarts career overlaps with their distant cousin Bellatrix’s by one year. Echo’s rather glad to have missed her. Both of them are at Hogwarts when the Marauders, Lily Evans, and Severus Snape begin. Cyllene graduates four years and Echo a mere two before that lot.

After school, Cyllene becomes a Death Eater, and Echo joins the Order of the Phoenix. No matter what else, they’ll have an epic showdown at noon on a day the moon is hanging in the sky. There may even be a prophecy about it. Perhaps it is the first prophecy Ceinwen Weasley ever makes.

How it turns out, well…that depends on who the main character is.

Cyllene triumphs when  _ she _ is the power fantasy. When the Dark Arts are misunderstood, unjustly stigmatized, or her writer is gleefully pushing the boundaries of edginess. When Salazar Slytherin was  _ right _ about Muggles. Cyllene is cool, sexy, and super goth. Her animagus form is either a huge snake or a raven, and her patronus is the other. Also her patronus is pitch black instead of silver, and can beat up normal patronuses. She defeats her sister, Dumbledore, and whichever of the Marauders Era characters the writer dislikes most, all while giving speeches on why they suck. She either proves her worth to Voldemort and ascends to act as his right hand while he takes over the world,  _ or _ she agrees with her mother that men shouldn’t get too full of themselves, defeats Voldemort, steals all his supporters for herself with her awesome display of magical power, and becomes Empress of the World.

If Cyllene is the main character and her obnoxious little sister kills her in the duel anyway, she’s promptly reincarnated as Harry Potter.

Echo triumphs when she’s the power fantasy, though her type is more likely intended to be relatable. Growing up in her older sister’s shadow, unsure of her own talents, yet stronger than she knows! Used to thinking of herself as the plain one, but with whichever Marauders Era character the writer likes most telling her how pretty she is (and probably snogging her, or being snogged  _ by _ her when she’s about to sacrifice herself to save them, which is why emphasizing the  _ distant _ part of ‘distant cousins’ is so important (okay, that could be important for Cyllene snogging someone too)). Having to work harder to get as far, being bullied and teased at home and at school, almost giving up a few times but a pep talk from a canon character keeps her going (or getting the chance to  _ give _ a pep talk to someone, making her realize how she can help others, no matter how she feels about herself!).

Echo works hard to master the Patronus Charm. Her patronus is a field mouse, and not very strong on its own which means other people need to dramatically rescue her. On the plus side, the field mouse smells like a summer day and its presence makes other people's own happy memories echo through their minds unprompted.

Echo works hard to master the Animagus transfiguration (ultimately helped by the Marauders, or by Lily in verses in which Echo is Lily’s  _ other _ Slytherin friend). It’s a field mouse too. There’s just something about Echo that expects her sister to crush her.

Ultimately all the hard work pays off in that fateful duel, when she’s able to defeat Cyllene and save the day. Triumph does not always mean survival, however. Echo leaves the canon intact when she nobly sacrifices herself, keeping others alive to reach the beginning of Harry’s story.

If Echo triumphs and lives, in most versions of her story, she miraculously stops canon from ensuing. There’s no way she wasn’t involved  _ somehow _ with the Marauders and no way in hell would she believe Sirius is the traitor. She might even stop Voldemort from killing the Potters entirely.

We, however, are looking at a verse with a sufficiently high enough number of Voldemort’s spawn to keep any single one of them from overly warping canon until we can create a pile-up effect for maximum hilarity.

This Cyllene and Echo’s epic duel ends with both their wands snapped, duking it out with their bare hands and possibly a large rock. Echo incapacitates her sister, and Cyllene goes to Azkaban. Echo’s got a couple nasty curses on her though, and winds up in St. Mungo’s for a few weeks, maybe even months. When she gets out, canon’s progressed too far for her to stop, and even wise old Dumbledore believes Sirius betrayed the Potters, and…

And she’s just so  _ tired. _

~

(Mara Diggory’s first case when she gets her Auror job back is compiling enough evidence against Arachne Black to get her convicted on multiple counts of murder and thrown in Azkaban too.

Arachne lashes out against her younger daughter, who testified, during Echo’s first attempt at family visitation. Tells her that Vee is Lord Voldemort, and the two sisters’ father.

“Mum, I knew that,” Echo says, even more tired than normal because of the dementors. Not so tired that she says ‘mother’ instead of ‘mum’ though, knowing the casual form of address will piss Arachne off. “I've known for years. Cyllene and I overheard you talking once when we were kids. The only mystery is why you didn’t make him pay child support. Or is that the Black family pride thing again?”)


	4. 1960’s - We Need Umbrellas On The Inside

Our next entry does not regard a character who can warp canon, but rather one that sidestepped it. We’d like to introduce you to Gregory Prewett.

Now, Gregory is born in 1960 after a bit of scandal in which Doris Prewett passed a very pleasant evening with a charming young man, and a few months later realized she was in a bit of a sticky spot. His name was...oh dear. She’s pretty sure it started with a T. Or maybe it had been a V. Oh, those don’t sound anything alike at all, do they? Oh, that’s embarrassing. At least she knows he’s a wizard, because they met in Diagon Alley.

(Voldemort was testing out a variation on Polyjuice Potion which let him look like himself, if he’d never done enough Dark Magic to make his face all melty and his hands claw-like, and Doris was cute.)

Doris’s parents have differing opinions on whether Doris should keep or terminate the pregnancy, though they are united in scolding her for letting it happen. Since Doris is a grown-ass adult with a job, sharing a flat with some of her old schoolmates, she can tell them both to fuck off. Not that she says it like that, because Doris doesn’t say things like “Fuck off,” at least not where people can hear her.

His extended family has two big expectations for Gregory that he’s not going to meet: that he’s a witch.

Gregory corrects them on half of that term at age seven, when he finds the perfect name for himself in a children’s book he got at the public library. Gregory suits him much better than what he had before, and he refuses to answer to anything else. Doris adapts immediately. The rest of the Prewetts think it’s some childish game. Whether they’d change their minds as Gregory grew up becomes moot when he turns eleven and, despite his grandparents desperately owling the Headmaster, no Hogwarts letter arrives.

Doris ignores all the advice (and accusations) being levelled at her, calmly makes sure Gregory is still enrolled in his local school, and then signs up for night classes at a Muggle community college so she can be confident in helping with his homework.

The rest of the Prewetts don’t like that Gregory isn’t a witch, and aren’t tactful about it. Gregory dislikes them right back. Doris eventually runs out of patience for peacemaking and when her parents not only  _ don’t _ give Gregory a pocketwatch on his seventeenth birthday but make sure he knows  _ why _ they’re not, tells them to go fuck themselves.

Everyone hears her, this time.

Gregory falls in love twice. The first time is with numbers, which leads him to a job in accounting and then a career as a stockbroker. The second time is with Emeline Baker, who picked her own name from a book just like he did, and likes numbers too. They have a beautiful wedding, an incredibly happy marriage, and in most universes, children.

In this particular universe, their daughter Mafalda starts at Hogwarts in September of 1994, just in time for the pile-up. She brings her pet corn snake with her, and unlike her father, never keeps her ability to speak with it a secret.

~

(Vernon and Petunia Dursley are rude to Gregory and Emeline at a financial networking event in London once, and Gregory promptly pulls some strings to crash Grunnings’ stocks.)


	5. 1960’s - There’s A World Outside Of My Front Door

All right then, let’s get back to the gravity wells, shall we?

Voldemort never loses Tom’s fascination with magic or his complete disregard for other people’s boundaries, so when he hears about a power-gathering ritual passed down from master to apprentice in an unbroken line for longer than Hogwarts has existed, he sets about learning it. There’s not very many details in the crumbling journals and tomes he finds though, so he needs to chat up whoever knows it all now.

Melia Greengrass is the current practitioner of the ancient art of having sex during solstices and equinoxes, on top of ley-lines, with runes drawn all over yourself and your partner, in order to infuse yourself with a whole bunch of magical power. She’s already got an apprentice, thank you very much, so Voldemort can’t convince her to teach him the runes and the ritual. And for safety reasons that involve reducing variables, the non-practitioner partner needs to be a Muggle. Whether they know that this is magic or just think their partner is really into body paint and outdoor sex is up to the practicioner’s disecretion.

Some plain old regular Polyjuice Potion takes care of the whole “Melia recognizing Voldemort and telling him to take a hike” problem. He passes himself off as a gullible, seducible Muggle man visiting the tourist town Melia picks her partners from.

(Of course she doesn’t use _locals,_ that would be _rude,_ they’re her _neighbors_ for Morgana’s sake.)

Now, as we know, Voldemort is very arrogant and very callous. He assumes that whatever risks him being a wizard brings to the ritual are something he can handle, and doesn’t care if Melia can. He’s almost disappointed when nothing goes spectacularly wrong. And he’s long gone by the time the true results come to light.

Ismenia Greengrass is born in late September of 1965 with a full head of hair. As soon as the bloody mess of birth is cleaned off enough to see that it’s a lovely shade of dark green, Melia growls out “That lying bastard!” so angrily all the candles in her house flare up and her apprentice has to run around putting all the fires out.

For a long time, that’s the only sign that Ismenia’s father was a wizard. Her hair is green and won’t take bleach, dyes, glamour charms, or transfigurations. Melia keeps it cut in a short bob and makes her wear a hat when they go into town to avoid Muggles asking about it. Ismenia’s half-brother Tenerus (whose father really _was_ a Muggle tourist) reassures a tearful Ismenia several times over the years, after Melia’s growled her way through another haircut, that their mother isn’t angry with _her._ Tenerus looks out for Ismenia a lot. He’s six years older than her, done enough accidental magic to guarantee his place in Hogwarts, and much more grounded in the modern world than their mother and her apprentice.

It’s not until Tenerus has been at Hogwarts for a few years that the other effect of having a wizard father shows itself, in Ismenia’s first incident of accidental magic. She’s nine years old, improperly supervised, and falls off the roof in a way that should have killed her. If she had landed a few inches to the left or right. If she had landed at a different angle. If the branch of the apple tree hadn’t broken her fall. No one even realizes it was magic that saved her. They think the first time is six months later when something goes wrong with a potion, the cauldron explodes, and not a single piece hits her. Even a scratch would have been deadly, with the toxic coating of potion on every piece. When Ismenia steps away from the wall, shaking, apologizing to her mother for distracting her while Melia was brewing, the shrapnel’s shown to have made a perfect outline around her.

You see, the reason to avoid fellow magic users in the ley-lines ritual is not because magic on its own is a problem. It’s because you don't know what they’ve gotten themselves mixed up in. And Voldemort? Oh, he was _steeped_ in death, and in running from it. And when you involve someone like that in a power-gathering ritual on the winter solstice? On the longest night of the year?

You might just make someone death proof.

Ismenia Greengrass is by no means immortal or impervious. She’s simply supernaturally lucky when it comes to anything fatal. A bat-bogey hex or normal papercut will ruin her day, but a Killing Curse will always miss her by inches. Falling rocks may crush her leg but never her skull. Knives can only sink in somewhere that gives her enough time to heal herself with normal spells, or even normal stitches. Someone trying to kill her in her sleep would trip over their own feet at the exact right moment to fail dramatically.

Other than that luck and a knack for healing spells (on herself, not on other people, which is frustrating) Ismenia’s magical power levels are quite low. Her only accidental magic is saving her own life, and when she gets into Hogwarts her practical exams are dismal. Fortunately her first year coincides with Tenerus’s last, and he’s supportive and practical. He encourages her to put extra study into magic that doesn’t require a lot of power, and attends Professor Slughorn’s independent potions study with her so she’s not so scared of something going wrong.

All of her wizarding raised classmates assume Ismenia is a metamorphmagus when they first meet her, and are disappointed when she explains the green hair is just its own thing. This does not make for a comfortable first few weeks of school, so on Halloween Ismenia recruits Moaning Myrtle’s help in telling her if she’s missed a spot and shaves it all off. She doesn’t like how she looks without any hair at all, and wears her school uniform hat all the time until a couple inches grow back, but finds it immensely satisfying to get rid of that fucking bob cut.

“Don’t say the f-word, you’re twelve,” Myrtle chides.

“My mum says it all the time,” Ismenia counters cheerfully. “Thanks for the help!” By the time summer rolls around, it’s grown enough that she can shave the sides and spike the top with Muggle hair gel, and refuse to wear hats. It’s the summer of 1978, and she looks like a much shorter version of the punk musicians in Muggle magazines.

“You’re twelve!” Melia hisses, an odd echo of Myrtle. “You can’t wander through town looking like that! The neighbors will think—”

Tenerus steps in like he always does, and Ismenia gets to to run around town with locals and tourists alike staring at her. The next summer goes much to the same, though this time Ismenia’s grown her hair out over the school year and keeps it in a low ponytail, just to see what long hair is like. But at the beginning of the third summer Tenerus announces that the couple whose farm he’s been helping out on have invited him to move in, and he’s accepted.

Ismenia as a child was quiet, not wanting to be a bother, and easily ignored. Ismenia as a young teenager with a couple years of magical schooling under her belt is a thunderstorm of strong opinions and high emotions. Without Tenerus around, Ismenia and Melia Greengrass get into screaming rows with each other every week. It’s _exhausting,_ so when one of her classmates offers to let her tag along on a backpacking trip through Europe the summer between fourth and fifth year, Ismenia jumps on the chance and Melia does all the paperwork to make sure her passport and travel visas are in order.

And Ismenia kills her first vampire.

She doesn’t _set out_ to kill vampires during her summer backpacking trip, but there's this little village that needs help. And she turns out to be good at it. Like, really, _really_ good at it. So good at it that when she gets back to Hogwarts, she dives into independent Defense Against the Dark Arts study about vampires, hags, ghouls, werewolves, and every other thing that could possibly bump around the night preying on people. After taking her OWLs, she sets off with a backpack full of potions, camping rations, and a dozen stakes she carved herself from fallen branches in the Forbidden Forest.

It doesn’t even take Ismenia a full year to reach America, where everyone calls her Izzy, and nobody cares that her normal magic is very low powered. Half the American vampire hunters are Muggles, because vampires are an everyone problem, and they appreciate the potions she makes them.

“Good job, kid,” April Griddle says, as Izzy climbs out of a dumpster with doxie venom, ashwinder eggshells, and vampiric raccoon fur in her green hair.

“Thanks!” Izzy says, beaming at her mentor.

Life’s good.


	6. 1970’s - I’m Just A Painter

By the end of the 1960’s, Voldemort has achieved several relevant things. He has perfected the Polyself Potion. Learned a great number of Dark Arts which call for the blood, bone, flesh, and so forth of a close relative. Made a second horcrux (probably more). And most importantly, had several close calls in which those horcruxes almost became _necessary._

He’s about to take his war for wizarding supremacy out of the shadows and into the open. And arrogant as he is, Voldemort knows he could die. Having multiple children to get ingredients from is urgent now, and he’s lost track of the older ones.

Maureen Maplethorpe is a Muggle artist who’s had to choose between paints and dinner enough times for a spouse with a steady, lucrative job to look really enticing. And with businessman Thomas Argent traveling for work so often that he’s barely around, well, that just means she can enjoy their time together without ever actually getting sick of him. They have a whirlwind romance, get married at the courthouse on New Year’s Day 1970, and their first child is born on October 1st of that year.

A note: Voldemort’s qualifications for a wife are one, not mind how little he’s there, two, be willing to live in a quaint country village small enough that he can ward the hell out of not only their house but the entire village to keep his own followers (who have no idea he’s doing this) from screwing things up, and three, be super hot. Maureen meets the first two and knocks the third out of the park. Like we are talking ten out of ten, everyone who’s into women would bang, turns heads without trying. This has no bearing on the plot whatsoever we just really want you to know that Maureen is _slammin’._

Anyway, back to the spawn of the Dark Lord. This time there are five. All of them display fairly average accidental magic and chat with snakes out in the woods. Thomas fakes astonishment, tells Maureen he’ll write to the Department of Education to see if there’s a school for this sort of thing, and in the meantime to hide it from the neighbors.

Regina “Queenie” Argent, born October 1st 1970, rules over her younger siblings like her name suggests, but is a benevolent dictator. She leads them through romps in the woods and makes sure none of them eat Maureen’s paints. She thinks magic is wicked cool, and can’t wait to go to the school in Scotland their dad said the Department of Education told him about.

Penelope “Pip” Argent is born in June 1972, and desperately wants to be normal. This is a small village, and while everyone in small villages has eccentricities, being the children of an artist and a mostly-absent father makes the Argent pack stand out, especially when weird things really _do_ happen around them often enough to get noticed. Queenie’s a great older sister and best friend, but Pip wants friends she’s _not_ related to. She’s torn between wishing her magic would go away so she could fit in, and wishing she could go to the mystery school early. At least there everyone else would be weird too.

(In college Pip will discover they’re agender and feel a profound sense of relief. However, in childhood Pip is very attached to being a Normal Girl and would be hurt rather than elated by gender-neutral terms, and so we shall be using ‘she/daughter/sister’ through this segment.)

Nadine is born in January of 1977, and Xanthia in June of 1978. Their classmates try to give them nicknames, none of which ever stick. Nadine will start her seventh year at Hogwarts in 1994, which is going to be important later.

On June 21st 1980, Lord Voldemort gets something he didn’t even know he wanted. He gets a son. Maureen Maplethorpe-Argent’s fifth and youngest child is named Thomas Argent Jr., Tommy to his friends. His father whispers to him that his middle name is Marvolo, but never bothers writing that down anywhere.

(Of course, as astute readers will recall, Voldemort already has a son whose existence he is unaware of.)

It’s little Tommy’s birth that motivates Voldemort into doing something he frankly should have done a decade ago when Maureen first got pregnant. He shores up all their damned finances. Brushes off his old social engineering and Muggle fraud skills to solidify businessman Thomas Argent’s identity. Establishes trust funds for all five kids, and one for Maureen too in case Tommy is sentimental about his mother. Establishes Thomas Argent as an identity in the wizard world as well so he can open a Gringotts account, channel more money into it, and set up trusts funds from _that_ too. He even writes Maureen a letter so she’ll know how important it is to get their son into Hogwarts, not some other school, on the slim chance that he’s not around then.

One year, four months, and ten days later, on October 31st 1981, Lord Voldemort does three things. One, he sires one final offspring with his original body. Two, he commits some more murders. Three, he dies. Not that his death _sticks,_ but it takes him out of all his children’s lives for over a decade and makes a lot of people very happy.

Maureen and her children don’t know anything’s happened until five days later. Mr. Argent is away on business trips a lot, after all, and hasn’t been home in weeks. But he promised to be there for Guy Fawkes Night. Lord Voldemort _loves_ setting off explosives with his children on the anniversary of some Muggle blowing himself up while trying to blow up even more Muggles. It’s his _favorite holiday._

Maureen promptly reports him missing, and there’s an investigation, and more reports filed, and eventually Thomas Argent is officially declared a missing person. Queenie is eleven and Pip nine, so they understand what’s going on, and can scare themselves coming up with all sorts of reasons for their father not to have come home. Nadine is four-and-a-half and Xanthia is three, so they can pick up on everyone’s agitation and vaguely understand that Daddy, who wasn't a part of their daily lives, might not be back for a long time. Tommy is one-and-almost-a-half and very busy learning how to waddle at high speeds now he's mastered walking.

Queenie’s Hogwarts letter arrives in early July, 1982, delivered by owl post, and she bursts into tears in the middle of breakfast. Dad had been _so excited_ for her to go to the magical school in Scotland, and now he’s probably dead in a ditch somewhere!

(Pip thinks it's more likely Thomas Argent ran off with a new girlfriend than that anyone murdered him for his wallet or kidneys or whatever, but doesn’t say so. (The neighbors _do_ say so.))

Maureen, who’s used to animals behaving strangely around her children, asks the owl to stay and wait for their reply. It does. Pip has to read the letter out loud while Queenie hides her face in her hands. It doesn’t say where to purchase all the school supplies, or even where exactly in Scotland Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry _is._ Maureen grabs the nearest piece of scrap paper and scribbles back, _would love to accept, but where the hell are you located, how the hell is my kid supposed to get there, and where the hell do we get all these supplies? Please forgive the strong language, husband went missing last year and I’ve got five kids to wrangle. —Maureen Maplethorpe-Argent._

This lands Professor Sprout on their doorstep the very next day, apologizing for the confusion. “The war ended last year,” she says, wringing out her pointy hat in the entryway. She’d arrived by Apparition just outside the village, confused by the inability to arrive on their doorstep, and walked through a summer rain shower. “But most of the chaos is still in full swing. If we’d known your daughter only had a Muggle parent handling things a colleague or I would have brought the letter directly.”

“War?” Maureen asks.

“Oh dear,” says Professor Sprout. “You didn’t know?” At which point Maureen tells her eldest two children to take the younger three out in the yard to play while she and the professor discuss things. Half an hour later Maureen telephones a neighbor to come watch the kids for a few hours, and goes to Diagon Alley with Sprout.

“Your daughter will need to come in person for her wand and robes fitting,” Sprout points out, while Maureen attempts not to gawk. She’s angry enough that it’s not too hard. Her husband was some kind of wizard, which the school knows because he has his name on some Ministry registry as a homeschooled wizard that never took any formal exams. Her husband was a wizard who married her in the middle of a war where people like her and their children were _targets_ and he never sodding told her they were in _any bloody danger at all._

If he’s not actually dead she’s going to kill him herself.

“Mm,” is all Maureen says to Sprout.

It turns out she doesn’t need to change any Muggle money into wizarding currency, because her liar of a husband already made an account, filled it, and left a key and a letter for her. Maureen sits down to read the letter in the lobby of the bank while Sprout politely sits a little bit away. It’s not very long.

_My dear Maureen,_ it begins. _If you are reading this letter, then events have conspired to take me from your side. I will return as soon as I am able. It is of utmost importance that our son Thomas attend Hogwarts, not any other wizarding school._

Then her husband's letter goes on to say he's a pureblood wizard, whatever the hell that means, that Argent isn’t his bloodline’s true name but that it’s too dangerous to write down whatever it really is, and he’ll tell Tommy himself someday. That the bank can give Maureen the details about the account. That there’s war going on, which he’s fighting in, but not what it’s over or what he personally is fighting for. He doesn’t mention their daughters even once.

Maureen carefully folds it up, and asks the banker if they can keep it on file for her. Right now all she wants to do is rip it up or burn it, but she’s spent a long time not letting her temper get the better of her, and she’s not going to start now. Then she gets most of Queenie’s supplies, goes home, and lets her children keep thinking their father was a normal businessman.

“If you want to go to Hogwarts, we’ll go back and get the rest of your supplies,” Maureen tells Queenie. “But if you want to go to a different school, even stay home, we can do that too.”

Queenie tearfully asks if she can wait a year, and start at the same time as Pip. The first reply from Hogwarts says that’s not done, though transferring in from another school is allowed. But Queenie doesn’t qualify for any other wizarding schools and none of the Muggle ones would give her the lessons needed to transfer in for second year. Maureen writes back blisteringly that Queenie’s father went off _alone_ on a business trip and then _never came home_ and if Queenie wants to wait until she can _go with her sister_ then Maureen is going to make that happen. 

So Queenie and Pip start at Hogwarts in September of 1983!

One year behind Bill Weasley, one year ahead of Charlie Weasley and Nymphadora Tonks. They learn a lot more about the recent war from their classmates than Maureen did from Professor Sprout. They also learn a great number of things about He Who Must Not Be Named in particular, including the fact that he could talk to snakes and that everyone thinks this is a sign of his evil nature. Queenie and Pip look at each other when they hear this, deciding to keep the family talent to themselves for now. They’ll warn their younger siblings to keep quiet about it before they come to Hogwarts too.

Speaking of which, we'll get back to those siblings later. It’s time for a few other families.


	7. 1970’s - We’re Broken Down On Memory Lane

War isn’t all big flashy duels in Diagon Alley or creepy assaults in the night with reanimated corpses, it’s also the careful building up of information networks, and Tom Riddle does his part of that just as much as any other Death Eater. With some regular Polyjuice Potion and a handful of accurate tips early on he establishes himself as an ally to Dumbledore’s little club, and after that he can feed them all the false information he wants.

Kay Weasley is a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and knows that any of them could die at any time. She’s not eager to get married like her four siblings were but she’s not going to turn down a nice time with one of the Order’s informants either. Around the time Dumbledore is getting suspicious of how often Steve’s information turns out to be ever so slightly wrong, or out of date, or even accurate but for something very minor that distracts them from something big, Steve’s murdered by the Death Eaters.

“His name wasn’t even Steve,” Kay says morosely to her brother Arthur as he tries to cheer her up. “It was a code name. I don’t know his real name.”

Being the middle of a war, the Weasleys take her unexpected, out of wedlock pregnancy as less of a scandal than the Prewetts took their daughter Doris’s fifteen years earlier. Ceinwen Weasley, nicknamed Wendy Bird by her cousins after they read _Peter Pan,_ is born in June of 1975, which those of you tracking the timeline will note puts her as the first of Voldemort’s children to have any of her time at Hogwarts overlap with that of Harry Potter. She’ll be studying for NEWTs while he’s in first and second year.

Some people have described time as a flat circle. When it comes to prophecies, that flat circle is a pond, and events both major and minor are stones tossed into it, sending out ripples and waves. Or perhaps it is not the events, but the people tied to them who act as stones, and interesting effects happen when the ripples hit each other. Voldemort and Harry make a lot of ripples.

Add in a dormant Seer ability in the Weasley line, and you get a Wendy Bird.

Kay Weasley, much like her niece Ginny, is short. Tom Riddle was not. Wendy pretty much looks like if you took Kay and stretched her up like taffy, and then added a streak of pitch black hair at the dead center of her crown, drawing focus from the gingery red locks around it and making her face look longer than it is. Wendy is gangly and awkwardly built. She isn’t beautiful or cute. She is occasionally striking, but that’s because the streak of black hair glows like an ember when she’s making a prophecy.

Most of them are too minor to create a glass orb in the Department of Mysteries. What’s going to be served for lunch tomorrow. Who’ll win a Quidditch match. Whether that picnic is going to get rained out. Those ones just make her hair gleam like the sun’s hitting it just right. The only thing that makes them stand out as prophecies rather than random quirky guesses is that one, they always rhyme, two, Wendy’s voice gets deeper, and three, she doesn’t remember making them.

(When it is a very large prophecy, the sort one might base an entire book series or epic AU fic off of, all her hair stands on end and looks like flames with a dark void at the center. It’s super cool and we encourage you to draw this.)

Wendy’s cousins and siblings (Kay adopts several war orphans) all have great fun trying to interpret the rhyming predictions. The bigger they are, the more convoluted the symbology in them. At sixteen she makes one about Harry Potter’s shower of Hogwarts letters that _seems_ like it ought to be easy, but since none of them have met Harry yet they keep rejecting their interpretations and eventually forget about it until the next summer when he’s rescued from the Dursleys and tells Ron the story of the letters.

This is the thing about Wendy Weasley; she is not the main character of her story. She is the cool big sister. She’s the older girl cousin for Ginny to look up to. The friend at Hogwarts to rib Percy about remembering to eat between essays that he’ll actually listen to. The cryptic yet cheerful font of knowledge on the wizarding world for Harry, Ron, and Hermione to talk to.

Weasleys go to Gryffindor, but Wendy is in Hufflepuff so that she doesn’t break the canon plot. She might sort out a few things that bother the writer, but mostly what she does is describe upcoming plot events in rhyme so that the reader can feel clever for puzzling it out, or look back at later and go “Oh _THAT’S_ what that meant!” She may also deliver zingers, quips, and big sisterly advice. It’s extremely likely that her writer has recently read several _Redwall_ books.

If the writer likes cats, Wendy has a service kneazle that stops her from walking into walls or anyone messing with her when she’s lost in a vision. In some verses she’s a blind Seer and has a white cane that’s got loads of useful enchantments in it, such as extreme durability and a password to wandlessly summon it if dropped. In those verses, she faces the basilisk directly at least once, which is an unnerving experience for both of them.

Ah. Yes. Excuse us, we said Wendy is not the main character. This remains true if she never meets the basilisk. If she does, and if her scent is enough like young Tom Riddle’s to give it pause, then her ability to speak parseltongue sends everything off the rails as soon as she starts chatting.

However, as she’s due to graduate, it’s quite possible for temporary main character Wendy Weasley to stop the basilisk from petrifying people whenever one likes in Harry’s second year, give Ginny a mug of cocoa and a pep talk, turn the diary over to Dumbledore, repeatedly “accidentally” smack both Gildery Lockhart and Lucious Malfoy in the face with her cane, somehow free Dobby, and then saunter off to let the rest of the series revert to canon.

Maybe with a few cameos to drop advice and bitchin’ rhymes over summer and winter breaks.


	8. 1970’s - That Gets Off On Being Down

Like the Argent siblings, Opal and Raven Green are the result of Voldemort deciding it’s a good idea to have extra children around for spare parts, but with a lot less effort. In the shared universe, he just keeps pretending to be Muggle businessman Thomas Argent and has an affair. Helen Green is set up with a trust fund for her daughters and told not to bother contacting Argent for anything else because he’s a very busy man, thank you.

Helen’s twins are born in August 1976. They don’t have any dormant Seer blood to awaken, so the ripple effects of the prophecy through time are to give them odd hair and childhood scars. Opal’s hair is silvery-white with one black streak over the left temple. Raven’s hair is jet black with a white streak over her right temple. Unlike Melia Greengrass, Helen Green doesn’t bother covering or trying to dye her daughters’ odd hair. It’s just highly coincidental skunk streaks, if the neighbors want to make a fuss they can piss off. People get weird about twins. Helen’s not going to make her daughters feel any weirder about themselves than the world is going to by acting like there’s something to hide about them.

On the day Harry Potter is born, when Opal and Raven are almost four years old, they trip while playing hopscotch on the sidewalk with the neighbor kids and give themselves matching lightning bolt scars right under their respective streaks.

Oh, and they have twin telepathy and telempathy, can locate each other no matter where they are or what spells are getting in the way, use each other’s wands as effectively as their own, and tell if the other is hurt. They’ll eventually have matching patronuses and Animagus forms. Like all their half-sibs, they can talk with snakes. That last bit is why they ask the Sorting Hat to put them in Slytherin, despite what everyone on the train said about that house not accepting Muggleborns.

“You’d do quite well in Ravenclaw,” the Hat tells Opal as she’s sitting under it. “And have an easier time; the only reason the compulsion on me will let you into Slytherin at all is because you don’t know for _sure_ that both of your parents are Muggles.”

“We like snakes,” Opal says. “And everybody calls us creepy anyway, and the kids on the train said Slytherin is the creepy house.”

“You’re not creepy, you’re eleven,” the Hat says. “But if you insist.” A moment later it’s telling Raven, “You know, just because your old school always split you up for classes doesn’t mean you _have_ to stick together here. Really.”

“Mm, nope, pretty sure we do,” Raven says. “And don’t even bother offering me Ravenclaw, I heard you offering Opal that and with my name it’d just be weird, and not in a cool way.”

“Children,” the Hat sighs. “Coolness is an illusion.”

“We _like_ snakes,” Raven repeats from earlier, deciding to stick with solid facts. The Hat sighs again, and sends her after her sister.

There are many different ways Opal and Raven’s story can go after that. Having a falling out. Sticking together even as one is corrupted. Being shunned by their housemates for their Muggle upbringing. Taking over their house and reigning as uncrowned queens for seven years. Finding the Chamber of Secrets as ickle firsties. Becoming academic rivals with their yearmate Percy Weasley. All sorts of things.

What happens in this verse is that they have an exceedingly normal school career, for Hogwarts. They’re not the oddest thing around anymore, and they get to relax. They go to class, make friends, take up extracurriculars. When third year rolls around, they pick electives that will help them get into magizoology.

Sixth year is a bit stressful with all the petrifactions, especially since they’ve never hidden their Parseltongue skills, which gets them a few accusations of being the Heir of Slytherin. Fortunately Wendy Weasley, who they made friends with ages ago because she was the first person they ever met with a hair streak like theirs, puts a stop to the problem. And at least it isn’t in their fifth or seventh year so their OWLs and NEWTs don’t need to be rescheduled.

Seventh year is _very_ stressful with the dementors, but on the plus side they get to meet wizarding war hero Echo Black.

They’re a few weeks along on the unit about the Patronus Charm and several other high level defensive spells. Most of the class has only been able to summon a wisp of vapor, though Percy (thinking of the first test he aced) has been able to make _some_ sort of dog. Professor McGonagall visits the class at Professor Lupin’s request to demonstrate her ability to summon multiple patronuses, and in their next class a fairly average looking witch is leaning against the desk when they arrive. She’s got black hair cut short on the sides and just long enough to curl on top, with some leaves stuck in it, and is dressed a lot like Professor Sprout if Sprout wore Birkenstock sandals instead of rubber boots.

“I’ve asked Ms. Black to help you all tap into your happiest memories,” Lupin says. “She’s got an unusual talent.”

“The unusual talent for needing my butt rescued,” Ms. Black says with a wry smile. It makes Professor Lupin grin, like it’s an old joke between them.

“Ms. Black?” one of the Hufflepuffs says curiously. “... _Echo_ Black?”

“That’s me,” Lupin’s guest says. Percy Weasley starts vibrating like he wants to run up there and shake her hand and that only classroom etiquette is holding him back. Everyone knows the herbologist in front of them defeated famed Death Eater Cyllene Black and saved Percy’s Aunt Kay’s life. Ms. Black even went toe to toe with Bellatrix Lestrange and came out alive! Opal and Raven share a look; _this_ woman jokes self-deprecatingly about needing to be rescued?

Ms. Black casts her patronus before anyone can ask her anything about the war, and despite nearly seven years in Slytherin under their belt and even more keeping their emotions masked to creep out their rude classmates and neighbors, Opal and Raven let out high pitched squeals. They’re standing at the front of the class, and can clearly see the shining field mouse to shake itself from the end of Ms. Black’s wand. It’s the most adorable thing they’ve ever seen in their lives.

“I think a circuit of the room, Echo?” Lupin suggests. Ms. Black hums, and the field mouse ambles through the air between students. Wherever it goes, students start smiling, all the stress of studying for NEWTs falling away. “The Patronus Charm is made from happiness,” Lupin explains. “Which normally allows it to act as a shield between oneself and dementors. In Ms. Black’s case, rather than the happiness acting as a shield, it is more of a...magnet, or perhaps a resonance. This makes it somewhat ineffective against dementors directly, but with a friend is extremely powerful. I’d like you all to take out your wands and attempt the charm again.”

They do. And it’s easy, this time. Memories bubble up, warm and golden. Opal and Raven can feel each other’s happiness as they cast the charm. And then their surprise, as Raven’s silvery snowy owl is mirrored by Opal’s coming out of her wand not silvery, but dark slate. Nearly black. Lupin blanches, which they’ve never seen him do before. Ms. Black just raises her eyebrows and says, “Huh.”

“Whoa, Opal, that’s so cool!” a Ravenclaw classmate says.

“Thanks,” Opal says, bewildered. Their textbook hadn’t said patronuses could come out as anything but light silver. She and Raven both unsummon their patronuses, swap wands, and cast again. Whether the snowy owl is silvery or slate is definitely being caused by the witch, not the wand. They swap back.

Lupin asks them to stay after class, and then sort of awkwardly waves them towards Ms. Black and walks into his office. The door stays open, because that’s what you do when having a guest speaking to your students, but he’s given them enough space for some privacy if they keep their voices down.

“Do you know what’s up with our patronuses, Ms. Black?” Raven asks, fidgeting.

“Call me Echo,” the herbalist says, running her hand through her hair and sighing. “Everything all right at home?”

“Yeah, why?” Opal says.

“Because I’ve never met anyone with a dark grey patronus before,” Echo says. “But I knew someone when I was younger with a black one that moved like tar, and she...didn’t have a happy home life.”

“Oh,” the twins say together. There’s a few moments of silent communication Echo isn’t privy to, and then Opal cautiously says, “Mum’s fine, but before Hogwarts we didn’t have a lot of friends. And people are still...distant, when we go back.”

“This isn’t a dye job,” Raven says, pointing to her hair. “We’ve always had this. The mirror thing. The neighbor kids used to say we walked outta a horror flick. And we did accidental magic, which made it worse. So we started…”

“...playing it up,” Opal says in a sing-song voice, opening her eyes wide and tilting her head to the side, as Raven does the same thing in the other direction.

“Because if you’re doing it on purpose, you’re _making_ them stay away,” Echo says, nodding in understanding. “Being isolated is something you’re _doing,_ not something _happening_ to you.”

Opal and Raven straighten their necks out and sigh. “Did we jinx an aesthetic into our spells or something?” Raven asks.

Echo shrugs. “I spend my time in the dirt, not theory books. But I do know holding on too tight to hurts from childhood can really mess you up.” She smiles the wry smile again. “It sucks that the other kids back home avoided you, and nobody gets a redo on childhood. But you don’t have to _keep_ playing it up. Whether you stick around your old neighborhood once you graduate, or move somewhere new, I think you shouldn’t bother messing with people.”

“Even when they’re jerks and creeping them out would be satisfying?” Opal asks sceptically.

That gets the first big smile from Echo. “Save it for a last resort. It’s what you’ve always done, right? Try something new. Somebody says you walked out of a...what was it again?”

“Horror flick,” Raven prompts.

“Horror flick,” Echo says, nodding. “Look ‘em dead in the eye and tell ‘em it hurt your feelings.”

_“What.”_

“Make ‘em apologize.”

_“What.”_

“It’ll be funny,” Echo says. “And they might just realize what assholes they’re being. I don’t know if it’ll give you a normal patronus, but it’ll sure make for some interesting new memories.”


	9. 1970’s - I Could Learn To Pity Fools

Voldemort tries out the solstice ley-lines ritual he stole from Melia Greengrass a few times, but he can never get it to work quite right. He’s  _ sure _ he memorized all the runes she painted correctly, but obviously learning it requires a full apprenticeship for a reason.

His attempt during the summer solstice of 1978 is with Bonnie Starchild, formerly Barbara Jones but she legally changed it as soon as she could because Barbara never really suited her, you know? And aren’t we all children of the stars? She meets “Marvolo...er...just Marvolo, surnames are a tool of the government to monitor us,” at an outdoor music festival and they hit it off right away. He listens to her enthusiastic plans for the next decade’s harmonic convergence, and shares some of his own hopes for the upcomic solstice, and, well, one thing leads to another…

Bonnie labors through the last hours of Aquarius, February 18th 1979, and then her daughter enters the world in Pisces, just past midnight a few minutes into February 19th. Harmony Starchild is a month premature and has sky-blue hair. The Muggle midwife to help Bonnie through labor (in a brand new water-birth center the midwife is proud of) has a close friend who went to Hogwarts, and breezily assures Bonnie (who was surprised but not alarmed) that this is perfectly normal for magical children.

“All children are magical,” Bonnie says.

The other people at the commune, and later the neighbors in the village they move to when Bonnie has a few too many disagreements about the parameters of vegetarianism, assume Harmony is a blonde child with a mother that inexplicably dyes her hair. When she starts at Hogwarts in 1990 she’ll have the same problem Ismenia did, being assumed to be a metamorphmagus.

Harmony reads a lot of New Age magazines and books. She goes into bigger cities with her mother once a month trying to get people to sign petitions to save the whales. She knows astrological star charts back to front and inside out, and the one piece of science she follows is astronomy, which will give her top marks in that class.

Essentially, Harmony Starchild is a Muggleborn Luna Lovegood. And as she is content to wisp along in the background doing her own thing for now, we shall leave her to it.


	10. 1980 - They Say Quitters Never Win

Sometimes really big coincidences happen. Early in 1980, Lord Voldemort hooks up with three different women over just a few days. One is a Death Eater, Mrs. Rosier-Rowle, who along with her Death Eater husband Mr. Rowle, will claim coercion via Imperius to keep herself out of Azkaban, and spend a lot of money greasing the wheels of the wizarding justice system to get that lie swallowed.

One is Muggle ex-housewife Eunice Yates, who’s recently divorced and having a Girls’ Night at the pub with all her friends to celebrate.

And one is an American witch named Kelly McTavish, whom Voldemort meets when he’s popped over to America real quick to try and rustle up obscure potions ingredients and maybe new recruits because Dumbledore’s minions are doing a bigger number on his forces than he wants to admit. Kelly’s not one of the potential recruits, she doesn’t hold with that anti-Muggle nonsense. She’s the organizer of a small potions expo.

Rhadamanthys “Amy” Rosier-Rowle, Yvonne “Vonnie” Yates, and Crystal McTavish are all born on Halloween 1980. See, we told you really big coincidences happen. They all start at Hogwarts in 1992 (Ms. McTavish being very surprised to get an acceptance letter for Crystal, but not turning down free tuition), meet on the train, get to chatting, and decide sharing a birthday means they’re destined to be friends.

In universes where there’s only one of them, things could go rather differently. An isolated Rhadamanthys is a dark-haired, female Draco Malfoy, going into Slytherin because all her family has before her, and turning out a lot like Cyllene Black, becoming a sneering rival to Ginny Weasley or the Golden Trio. She learns of her mother’s affair with the Dark Lord at some extremely dramatic moment.

Vonnie by herself is an Everygirl Muggleborn, with as few physical descriptions as possible, and maybe even written in the second person. She, Eunice, and Eunice's ex-husband all assume she was conceived while the divorce was finalizing, resulting in normal Muggle child support. Voldemort has no idea she exists, but probably figures it out when she saves a main character using parseltongue.

Crystal McTavish without besties outside Gryffindor (of course she’s in Gryffindor) is a  _ wrecking ball. _ She compares Hogwarts to American schools at the drop of a hat. She charms people with her brashness. She helps Dean Thomas start a Hogwarts soccer team. She becomes besties with Ginny and saves her from Riddle’s diary.

Befriending each other on the train, however, neatly keeps them out of the plot’s way. Rhadamanthys has a complete change of heart about Muggleborns in the first five minutes of meeting Vonnie, because Vonnie’s just so  _ nice. _ Crystal says her name is “super cool!” but also a bit long, and Rhadamanthys twists some hair around her finger and admits she’s sometimes dreamed about asking friends to call her Amy. You know, if she had friends instead of just pureblood peers she’s expected to constantly assess as potential allies or rivals.

Obviously if Amy’s got a Muggleborn for one of her two new best friends she can’t go into Slytherin, what if she wanted to invite Vonnie over to study? The Hat kindly suggests Ravenclaw, and she takes it. Vonnie gets Hufflepuff. Hanging out all the time with a Ravenclaw and a Hufflepuff keeps Crystal away from the rest of Gryffindor often enough that her gravity well and the Golden Trio’s won’t tug on each other overmuch for now.

If the untriplets were the  _ only _ daughters of Voldemort running around Hogwarts, bonding as a trio of Girl Detectives their first year trying to solve the mystery of the Chamber of Secrets, they could easily attract all the plot to themselves. But they’re not, and Wendy deals with it instead. They do, however, get points from Dumbledore himself at the End Of Term Feast for promoting inter-house unity.


	11. 1981 - We Walk The Plank On A Sinking Ship

We now have two more, final children of Voldemort to introduce to you, dear readers, before introducing them en masse to each other.

In early 1981, Voldemort hooks up with Miss Selwyn, an unmarried Death Eater, quite possibly in an attempt to both show favor and make Bellatrix jealous. Voldemort is extremely fond of Bellatrix, but he is also an asshole. The pregnancy’s showing clearly by Halloween of that year, but Voldemort isn’t acknowledging it at all. He’s busy, and also Miss Selwyn seems to be having fun pitting several of her marriage suitors against each other with it.

On the afternoon of October 31st, 1981, Voldemort’s still under the lingering affects of his Polyself Potion, in a very good mood about the murder he’s got planned for the evening, and looking to pass some time. He goes to a Muggle Halloween party in Godric’s Hollow and hooks up with a woman named Trisha who thinks his ‘vampire costume’ is soooooooo sexy.

And then a few hours later Lily Potter’s efforts to protect her son pay off and Lord Voldemort dies for the first time. The town hears the house explode, and Trisha calls emergency services from a pay phone to send help, but all the wards prevent Muggles from getting close. By the time Severus Snape and Sirius Black have come and gone, and Rubeus Hagrid is flying baby Harry over Bristol, the entirety of Godric’s Hollow will forget the explosion.

Syrinx Selwyn is born on December 21st 1981, in a highly warded Ministry holding cell because even Barty Crouch Sr. balked at sending a pregnant woman to Azkaban. Everyone present assumes he’a a girl, and won’t be corrected in this assumption for quite some time. His Great Aunt and Uncle pick him up within hours; his grandparents died fighting the Aurors sent to arrest them. His mother is transferred to Azkaban, sneering at her escorts that the Dark Lord will free her soon, and dies on that dismal island within a few years.

Whether Syrinx’s Great Aunt and Uncle secretly supported Voldemort and raise him to hate Muggles or whether they supported Dumbledore and constantly crush any signs Syrinx is turning out like his mother, or an unfortunate combination of the two, varies by universe. What’s consistent is that he’s treated as a burden. When he gets to Hogwarts in September of 1993, he vows never to return to them. His grandparents had a house, lands, and fortune, which first went to his mother and now to him, but he can’t touch any of it until he turns seventeen. He’s an innate Animagus, and first transforms into a crow at age seven.

(an older student hears his anxieties about returning home, and quietly gives him the contact information for May & Jeanie Green)

Tabitha Tuft is born on July 31st 1982, and also starts at Hogwarts in 1993. Her childhood is a bit awkward, being a known bastard in a small village, but her mum’s extremely friendly and well liked so it’s not much of a big deal. She’s an innate Animagus too, frequently turning into a Norwegian Forest cat. Doing so at just the right moment in front of her neighbor Bathilda Bagshot means she knows a lot of wizarding history before ever getting to Hogwarts

Syrinx and Tabitha don’t meet on the train, and when they do meet in class they don’t like each other. But both of them like exploring the castle and grounds in their Animagus forms, and unknowingly meet that way as well. They spend all of autumn as human rivals in class and animal friends outside it. Then Tabitha goes home for the winter break, and Syrinx spends those weeks as the world’s mopiest crow. When Tabitha returns, Syrinx spends their first meet up rudely pulling tufts of fur from her tail. Which he’s done before, but this time he doesn’t stop when Tabitha hisses or swats at him.

“Would you  _ stop that?” _ Tabitha snaps, turning human again. Syrinx leaps into the air in shock, lands on a crenellation, and turns human too. They stare at each other for a bit, then burst out laughing, and Tabitha has to catch Syrinx when he falls off the crenellation. They’re friends in both forms, after that.

(Syrinx won’t need the Greens’ contact information after all, taken in every summer by Trisha. Which could be quite dangerous if Syrinx’s Great Aunt and Uncle hate Muggles. Fortunately Bathilda Bagshot had May come grow the Tufts’ rose trellises into wards the very first time she saw Tabitha turn into a cat.)


	12. 1970’s - And I’m Drawing A Blank

Goodness gracious, that’s all of them. We’ve done it dear readers, we’ve introduced two dozen (pardon me,  _ nearly _ two dozen, there are only twenty-three) of Tom ‘Lord Voldemort’ Riddle’s children, their mothers, and mentioned a few of the grandkids, now we can move on to the—

Oh you wanted to know more about the younger Argents. My apologies. Right. Yes.

Nadine’s a typical middle child in that she wants to stand out, with a dash of eldest child responsibility and overachiever due to the years when Queenie and Pip were at Hogwarts, then the summers after they graduated and moved out, when she had to keep an eye on Xanthia and Tommy. At Hogwarts the drive to stand out lands her in Slytherin (dearest Sorting Hat, whatever happened to discouraging the Muggleborns from going there?), gets channeled into her schoolwork, and perhaps into a sport such as the Rowing Team.

It also leads her to put her name in the Goblet of Fire in her seventh year.

Xanthia can turn invisible whenever she likes. She uses this to get out of chores and circumvent curfew (in order to stay in the library longer). She’s in the same year as Fred and George Weasley, setting her up to rival or romance them, if she were interested in that sort of thing. She’s not. She finds pranks a nuisance and romance annoying. She’s in Ravenclaw.

Tommy...well, it would be easy for him to be clichely evil, wouldn’t it? A spoiled youngest child, the son and heir of his father, a malicious brat that soaks up all the sexism of first his village and then the wizarding world. A nemesis for one of his main character older sisters to overcome.

Fortunately, while Tommy is a little spoiled he’s not the least bit sexist. He’s mostly just a curious kid who wants to be an artist like his mum. He’ll get to Hogwarts in September 1991, take an instant dislike to Draco Malfoy because of how he talks about Muggleborns, be sorted into Hufflepuff, and annoy the hell out of Professor Snape by constantly asking how potions can be used in painting or sculptural art. Losing house points does not deter Tommy in the slightest; he’s the youngest of five, you cannot make him stop being obnoxious,  _ especially _ when he believes himself to be acting perfectly reasonable.

The fact that he does, however, look like a little carbon copy of Tom Riddle at age eleven will cause Dumbledore to quietly launch an investigation into missing businessman Thomas Argent. Tommy getting petrified instead of Justin Finch-Fletchly in December 1992 (chatting with Nearly Headless Nick about the evolution of portraiture magic over the centuries) will cause Dumbledore to write his appearance off as a coincidence and drop the investigation. Being petrified from December to May means Tommy has to choose between repeating second year or doing cram classes over the summer, which means being away from home. He chooses to just repeat second year, which takes him  _ out _ of classes with Harry Potter, and  _ into _ ones with Ginny, Luna, Amy, Vonnie, and Crystal instead.

(Xanthia and Nadine are both  _ extremely upset _ at Tommy being petrified.)

There, that’s everyone sorted. Let’s continue!


	13. Drop A Heart, Break A Name

There are two main reasons the children of Voldemort all find each other:

One: Fleur Delacour knew her grandfather was an English wizard and wanted to make sure she didn’t mack on any cousins by accident on this competitive exchange trip.

Two: Barty Crouch Jr. super-duper fucked up when enchanting the Goblet of Fire.

Let’s start with Fleur. She talks to Grand-maman, and then an aunt who’s good at divination. They use a variation on the Pensieve Charm to make a photograph of her grandfather as he looked in the early 1950’s, and divine through multiple methods that his name was Tom Riddle. Fleur tucks the photograph safely in the inside of her hat.

Now, Barty. The plan _was_ to Confund the Goblet into thinking there were four schools competing, not three, add the name of a fourth school to a scrap of paper with Harry’s name on it that he tore off an essay, and drop it in.

The Confundus Charm goes wrong. Try as he might, Barty can’t get the Goblet to accept more than three schools. Instead he accidentally gets it to accept more than one Champion per school, for some reason. So he can still stick Harry’s name in! But he needs some way to guarantee Harry’s name comes back _out._ If he flubs this they have to drop Plan A: turn the Trophy Cup into two-way Portkey out of and into the school, use Harry’s blood to bring back Voldemort, summon followers, surprise attack on Hogwarts when a bunch of Ministry officials and foreign dignitaries are there to take hostage. Voldemort _loves_ Plan A.

Plan B is just kidnapping Harry for his blood, summoning followers, and starting the war about the same way as the first time around. No surprise attack on Hogwarts. Boring. Uninspired. Barty is going to be in _so_ much trouble if they have to use Plan B.

Maybe if he just...adds extra rules for who can be a Champion...yeah, that’s the ticket. Champion needs a strong connection to Voldemort! Harry killed him once, that’s a strong connection. Will anyone from the other schools have a connection? Eh, not Barty’s problem. It’ll spit out at least one name per school, and now Harry’s will be one of them. Barty heads back to his office congratulating himself on a job well done.

The Goblet of Fire churns through the names burnt up in its blue flames, searching . . . searching . . . searching . . . and eventually spits out:

Cedric Diggory, Fleur Delacour, Harry Potter, Nadine Argent, and Viktor Krum.

There’s a moment of stunned, confused silence in the Great Hall, and then everyone starts shouting all at once. Professor McGonagall buries her face in her hands and takes advantage of the uproar to let out a string of Not Appropriate For A School Environment swear words. Snape doesn’t bother burying his face in his hands as he does the same thing and the students who learned lip-reading find it very educational. The entirety of Ravenclaw hollers the loudest; why don’t _they_ get a Champion, huh?

Harry is accused of cheating. Nadine is accused of cheating. _Cedric_ is accused of cheating. Fleur and Krum awkwardly shuffle their feet as British Ministry of Magic officials, Hogwarts professors, and their own Heads of School yell at the three Hogwarts Champions in the little room behind the Great Hall.

“Obviously they did nothing wrong,” Fleur says when all the adults pause for breath at once. Well, the adults with authority. Technically everyone in this room except Harry is an adult by wizarding standards, because that had been part of the rules. “The Goblet is simply old.” She shrugs as everyone looks at her, and Krum picks up the thread.

“Yes, it is old,” he repeats. “And it has not been used in a long time.”

“You’re saying the enchantments have degraded?” Nadine asks, tilting her head. Fleur shrugs again, and Viktor nods.

“That makes sense!” Cedric says, smiling at everyone. Then he looks serious. “But unlike Argent and me, Harry swears he didn’t put his name in. And I trust Professor Dumbledore’s Age Line. Someone else must’ve entered Harry.”

This gets another round of shouting from the adults, as they fling accusations at each other. Cedric and Nadine pick Harry up by the armpits and join Fleur and Krum by the fireplace. “Um,” Harry says as they set him down, looking up at the older students. “Can I just not compete?”

“The binding magical contract on the Goblet says you have to compete,” Nadine tells him. “My little sister researched the Tournament when it was announced. If you don’t show up under your own power to one of the Tasks, you’ll get pulled towards it like an object being accio’d, and stuck there until you complete it, get declared a failure by the judges, or die.”

“Oh,” Harry says

“Well, can the Tournament officials make Harry some...safer Tasks, than the rest of us?” Cedric asks.

“No,” Krum says. “There are protections against cheating by the officials. All Champions must face the same Tasks, and the Tasks will have been decided before we entered our names.”

~

Several days later, when Barty has a weekend off for personal time, he makes his report in person to Lord Voldemort.

“Nadine Argent,” Voldemort repeats, when Barty’s told him what he had to do to get Harry’s name in the cup, and the results. He mentally dismisses the others; the foreigners are simply a requirement of the Tournament, and as for the Diggory boy, Voldemort _did_ face his mother in battle. That’s a connection.

“Yes, my lord,” Barty says.

“Nadine…” She’d been so small when he died. And now she was of age, in her final year of Hogwarts. How old had the others been? How much time had he lost? And what of his son? “Tell me, my loyal servant, has this Champion a brother at Hogwarts?”

“Yes. A third year. And she has a sister in sixth year.”

“Good.” Voldemort’s homunculus body is weak and grows weary. He summons Nagini and Pettigrew from outside the door. “See that Nadine survives the Tournament, and allow no harm to befall her brother.”

“Yes, my lord,” Barty says, keeping his questions to himself.

~

Rita Skeeter’s first article about the Tournament overly focuses on Harry and his tragic past, but the rest is delightedly scandalized by the sheer number of Champions.

_“Ancient magical artifact breaks down!”_

Krum and Harry are talked about as natural choices for the Goblet, aside from the issue of Harry being underage. Cedric just gets one sentence acknowledging he exists. Nadine’s Muggleborn status and Fleur’s quarter-Veela status are both mentioned in conjunction with the Goblet’s presumed breakdown.

The newspaper bursts into flames in Fleur’s hands, when she gets to that bit.

~

The very first Triwizard Tournament Task goes roughly as per canon, with various adults telling their respective Champions the Task is dragons, Sirius coming to Hogsmeade to keep an eye on Harry, Charlie Weasley being there, etc.

A few points of note are as follows:

One, recent graduates Raven and Opal Green are traveling the world to study magizoology by spending a few months at a time helping out at assorted wildlife reserves. This put them in Romania in time to transport the dragons over, and now they’ve got permission from Dumbledore to pitch a tent next to Hagrid’s hut, help out in his NEWT level classes, and explore the Forbidden Forest. They currently plan to stay until New Years, and then head off to Greece to study hippocampi.

Two, all the Champions share the intel about dragons with each other, and after the Task promise to share whatever they glean from their Eggs. “I do not want a small child being murdered by proxy,” Viktor Krum says slowly, as all five of them sit in the empty classroom they’ve dibsed as a meeting place. “Because I was close-fisted with knowledge.”

“I’m not a small child,” Harry says. “I’m fourteen.”

“Mate, you’re smaller than my baby brother, and he’s a third year,” Nadine says.

“That’s because he got held back and your family’s all tall,” Cedric points out. Nadine rolls her eyes.

Third, much to his disappointment, Tommy Argent completely misses cheering for his big sister Nadine and housemate Cedric during the first task because someone slipped an unusually strong bubble potion in his morning orange juice. Madam Pomfrey won’t let him leave the infirmary until the bubbles stop streaming out of his ears. Barty’s not taking chances on bystander accidents, okay? He doesn’t know _why_ Voldemort wants Nadine to survive and Tommy to be safe, but the Death Eaters always operated in small cells. Barty’s was with the Lestranges, he only knew a few others. Maybe their missing father Thomas Argent was actually a Death Eater the Phoenix fools killed, or their supposedly Muggle mother Maureen is and she’s undercover. Loyal followers that the Dark Lord is showing loyalty back to. That’s probably it.

Four, Nadine does a super awesome amazing spell that’s either completely made up or ripped from another franchise and ties for highest number of points with whoever it is that gets the highest number in canon. If the latter, Xanthia found it in the Hogwarts library, and Nadine improved it while practicing. If the former, Nadine invented it herself.

It’s _very_ cool.

~

“Anyone figured out their Egg yet?” Cedric asks at the start of their first Champions check-in meeting after the announcement that they all need a dance partner to open the Yule Ball with.

“No,” everyone choruses, and then Fleur says dramatically, “I have a much bigger problem!” Everyone looks at her. “I do not want to dance with another Beauxbatons student when we are promoting international goodwill, and as Hogwarts is hosting I want to look for a partner here first, before Durmstrang.” She pats Viktor on the arm apologetically. “But finding out if someone is my cousin is much more awkward than I thought! I do not know how to do it gracefully.”

“What?” everyone says.

Fleur sighs. “My mother’s father was an English wizard, and did not stay in touch with Grand-maman.”

Viktor pats _her_ arm sympathetically. “My mother’s father was also an English wizard who did not keep in touch.”

“Do you have his name?” Nadine asks. “We could ask around for you.”

Fleur smiles at her blindingly, as Viktor shakes his head. “Yes! And a photograph.” Fleur whisks off her hat and whisks out the photo, and says, “Tom Riddle.”

Harry squeaks. Everyone looks at _him_ now, except for Nadine, who’s frowning at the photo. “He looks like a younger version of my dad,” Nadine says. “I don’t remember him very well, I was four when he vanished, but Mum had photos of all of us together. Bloody hell, Fleur, what if your grandfather is my grandfather too?”

“That’s Voldemort,” Harry says.

 _“What!”_ everyone yells.

“I saw what he looked like at sixteen my second year, and found out his name used to be Tom Marvolo Riddle. He anagramed it into ‘I am Lord Voldemort’ ‘cause he didn’t like his parents.”

“...fuck,” everyone says.

A beetle sitting on the open windowsill quivers excitedly.

~

_GOBLET OF FIRE SECRET DETECTOR OF YOU-KNOW-WHO’S BLOOD?_

_Death Eater Dark Lord is Dead-Beat Dad! Ancestry reveal of the century brought to you by Rita Skeeter in special edition of Witch Weekly._

_Terror of the Wizarding World revealed by none other than Boy Who Lived & youngest Hogwarts Champion Harry Potter to be former golden child Tom Marvolo Riddle, graduating class of 1945, who rejected multiple Ministry offers to work for Burgin & Borkes antiquities dealers before dropping completely out of sight. Former classmates thought him dead! Former lovers thought him dead! _

_Your dedicated reporter has confirmed through interviews and bloodline potions taken by witches and wizards curious about their heritage that Bulgarian witch Zora Krum, French witch Appoline Delacour, British witch Mara Diggory, and the five children of British Muggle Maureen Maplethorpe-Argent (whose younger children’s names we shall be withholding for their privacy, though we can tell you the eldest is Nadine Argent, Hogwarts Champion) are all the children of He Who Must Not Be Named!_

_This makes the remaining three Triwizard Tournament Champions, Cedric Diggory, Fleur Delacour, and Viktor Krum his grandchildren! With only Harry Potter unrelated to Riddle by blood, yet having vanquished him as an infant, and the unusual choosing of five Champions when there should only be three, this reporter must ask: is the Goblet of Fire no longer choosing champions, but heirs? And if so, WHO was searching for Riddle’s heirs? Could there be more out there?_

_If you know or suspect yourself to be a descendent of Tom Riddle, known aliases Tommy Silverson, Thomas Argent, and Lord V*******t, we ask you to write Witch Weekly for an interview and complimentary bloodline potion._

_If you know or suspect yourself to have had a liaison or relationship with the above, Maureen Maplethorpe-Argent requests you contact her (forwarding provided by Witch Weekly) for mutual support in this trying time._

~

Echo Black lowers her magazine down onto the breakfast table next to her tea, drops her head onto it, and groans.

~

Barty Crouch Jr. crumples the magazine he confiscated off a student. His non-glass eye starts twitching.

~

Opal and Raven Green overhear some students chatting about a magazine article before seventh year NEWT Care of Magical Creatures, and ask about it. One of their former housemates pulls her copy of _Witch Weekly_ from her bag, still folded to the article in question.

They recognize their absent, cheating dad’s name in the list of aliases.

 _Shit,_ Opal says telepathically.

 _Do we need to tell Mum her ex-boyfriend was a wizard and also homicidal?_ Raven says back.

Opal bites her lip. _Probably for safety. Maybe ask her to move house and we set up some really good wards? At least that trust fund ended when we turned eighteen so she can cut ties with the bank if we need her to go into hiding._

_Should we ask Professor Dumbledore about staying longer than we planned?_

_Yeah, good idea._

~

In his office, Albus Dumbledore looks between the magazine in his hands and the drawer he keeps investigation files in, where the folder on missing businessman Thomas Argent innocently hangs. _Witch Weekly_ has included several photos of Tom Riddle during his school years, which make the resemblance to young Hufflepuff Tommy Argent even more obvious.

Because there is no one in his office to be dignified for but Fawkes, Professor Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, Grand Sorcerer, Supreme Mugwump, and Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot smacks himself on the forehead.


	14. We’re Always Sleeping In, Sleeping For The Wrong Team

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Harmony and Syrinx’s language for self-description has been chosen based on their story taking place in the mid 1990’s, and would likely be somewhat different were this scene to take place twenty-five years earlier or later.

Over the next few months there’s a huge flurry of letter writing, telephone calls, Floo calls, Floo visits, special permission forms for extra trips down to Hogsmeade, magic mirror chats (thanks, Room of Requirement!) and even some e-mails as people all through magical Britain and a few other places try to find out if they're related to Voldemort, and if so, get in touch with their newly discovered families.

Eventually there’s a family reunion at Hogwarts, with Professor Dumbledore kindly loaning them the Toad Choir’s practice hall (which has built in Extension Charms so it can grow and shrink with the size of the choir while retaining perfect acoustics). Well, it’s perceived as kindly. And it is! Dumbledore is very big on families being there for each other. It’s just _also_ a way of him making sure he knows exactly who’s related to Tom and keep an eye on them going forward.

But that won’t be until the spring, after the Second Task is over, so let’s rewind a bit.

Back in the spring of 1994, long after Tabitha and Syrinx have become friends, Syrinx is still thinking of himself as a girl. Then happenstance leads the two to get into a conversation with Harmony Starchild about her unusual school robes.

“I mean, nobody _has_ to wear their house colors on their robes,” Syrinx says, eyeing Harmony’s uniform. “But other colors usually aren’t allowed.”

“Purple and orange are the only extras,” Harmony says dreamily. “And they’re made of house colors blended together.” Harmony trims all her robes in rainbow, has wrapped a rainbow ribbon around the crown of her school hat (not that she wears it much), and sports a rainbow tie. On the spot most house-proud students sew their house crest or a stylized version of their animal, Harmony wears the Hogwarts crest itself. She’s glued cotton balls to bobby-pins so that it looks like there are fluffy white clouds in her sky-blue hair.

“What is your house, anyway?” Tabitha asks.

“The Sun was in the House of Pisces when I was born, on the cusp of Aquarius.”

“No, I mean, your Hogwarts house. You know, for points and class schedules and your dorm?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Everyone has a house, it’s the rules,” Syrinx says. “And the Hat’s Compelled to sort everyone who wears it and is a registered student.”

“I never wore the Sorting Hat,” Harmony explains. “I went exploring after Professor McGonagall led us to the antechamber, and by the time the prefects found me it had been put away for the year. They could have got it back out but when they said what for I asked them not to; Pisces is mutable.”

“Um,” says Tabitha, sharing a confused look with Syrinx.

“Professor Dumbledore said it could be quite interesting to have a student with no house, and let me stay in the little single dorm by the kitchens. He writes up my class schedule himself. Professors just tend to give or take points from whatever house’s color catches their eye on my robes first.” Her voice loses the dreamy quality. “I’m glad. Pisces is mutable but the regular dorms are rigid, and I don’t want to know if they’d reject me.”

Tabitha and Syrinx make questioning noises.

“Because I’m transgendered*,” Harmony says (“How did you _pronounce_ an asterisk?” Tabitha whispers). “I was born a boy, and now I’m a girl. The dorms are quite strict about girls and boys living apart, everyone tells me.”

“People can change genders?” Syrinx asks excitedly. “Could I be a boy? Is that allowed?”

Harmony nods, and says, “If your dorm gives you trouble, ask the Headmaster if you can stay with me. I don’t mind sharing.”

Of course, one may be very excited to learn a new possibility for one's future, and then terribly anxious and doubtful when the excitement wears off. Syrinx keeps answering to “Miss Selwyn” for the rest of term, but with growing frowns and grumbles. Over the summer Tabitha suggests wearing boys' clothes around Godric’s Hollow, since no one there but Tabitha knew Syrinx. This idea is met with great enthusiasm. At the end of the summer Syrinx asks Tabitha if they could still be friends if Syrinx was a boy.

“If I can be friends with a crow who pulls out my tail fur, I can be friends with a boy,” Tabitha says, and then wrinkles her nose. _“You’re_ not going to act like I have cooties and avoid me ‘cause I’m a girl now, are you? Even when we go back to school?”

“No! I’d never avoid you, Tabitha! You’re my best friend!”

Back at school, Syrinx tells his Head of House that there was a mix-up on his forms and he hadn't wanted to cause a fuss last year, but could the teachers please remember to call him ‘he’ and ‘Mister Selwyn’ (or just Selwyn or Syrinx), and move him to the proper dorm _this_ year? His Head of House obliges.

And while the Heiress to the Ancient and Noble House of Selwyn was a gossiped about figure in the pureblood world, his Great Aunt and Uncle had been reclusive enough in his childhood and Syrinx had kept under the radar enough as a firstie that saying “Oh no, you must’ve mixed me up with my mother, _she_ was the Heiress to the Most Noble and Ancient House of Selwyn, I’m the Heir,” is highly effective.

Not wanting to be seen as out of the gossip loop, or rude for bringing up his dead mother, all the nosy purebloods accept this at face value and quickly change topics.

Now back to the tail end of 1994, Tabitha sees Syrinx, who has a tendency to worry any change in perception will cause people to abandon him, change from crow to human form in the astronomy tower they like to do homework together in, and immediately wipe away tears.

“Syrinx?”

“Tabitha would you still be friends with me if my dad was evil?”

“Syrinx I’m already friends with you when your dad’s evil,” Tabitha says, confused. “You told me your mum was a Death Eater and had four other Death Eaters wanting to marry her and one of them was your dad and it was a scandal. And your Great Aunt and Uncle are evil too and we had to pretend I live in London when you came to stay this summer in case they got _actively_ evil about me being Muggleborn.”

“What if he was _even more evil?”_

“More evil than a Death Eater? Uh...Syrinx is this about that rubbish article? Do you think your mum shagged Voldemort or something?” It’s been a lot easier to say “Voldemort” since the article came out and it got listed as just another alias (albeit a censored one) with the much more mundane names.

Syrinx nods miserably. “My mother whispered to me that my father was Lord Voldemort when I was born, and she did wandless magic so that I’d remember her telling me that when I got old enough. That’s how I transformed the first time; I had a whole week dreaming that memory and I wanted to get away from it and suddenly I had wings.”

“Oh,” Tabitha says. She’d first turned into a cat to climb a tree better. Then she hugs Syrinx and says, “I don’t care how rubbish or evil your dad is, _you’re_ my friend. Now let’s go introduce you to all those half-sibs and nieces and nephews you’ve got running around.”

(Tabitha will take the bloodline potion when a whole bunch of other classmates are, just to prove it’s not a big deal, and be surprised for all of five minutes by the result.)

~

The Yule Ball is a multi-rhomboid fucktangular love prism of romance plots, crushes, and dramatic “Will you be my date?” proposals. Students who are too young to go show up without an older date inexplicably. Someone spikes the punch. The dress robes are out-of-this-world stunning and cause several dates to walk into walls. Multiple characters make out with the _Wyrd Sisters_ band members, and there are two other bands _also_ playing that are thinly-veiled references to bands the writer likes.

A love song or a break-up song that hasn’t been released yet in December 1994 plays while two characters slow dance, italicized lyrics interjected between dialogue and prose.

Xanthia and Tommy don't attend, instead abandoning Nadine (“It’s not like you’re fighting a dragon again!”) to spend the winter break with their mother and file for name changes. There’d been a fraught meeting in Hogsmeade (Maureen wearing the anti-Muggle-repelling-ward-amulet Queenie invented) in which the siblings argued over whether Maureen should have told them all she’d known their father was a wizard since getting Queenie’s Hogwarts letter. Ultimately “she still didn’t know if he was alive or dead, or what his real name was, and how much he’d been lying and putting them in danger would’ve been hurtful” won her all their forgiveness.

Then reading the letter Voldemort had left at Gringotts cemented his status in their hearts as “fuck that guy sideways” and all of them decided to drop Argent, the name he picked, and just be Maplethorpe.

(Nadine’s stuck as Argent until the Tournament is over, though. Magical binding contracts using the name you wrote down yourself are tetchy like that.)

It turns out to be a very good thing Xanthia decided to go home too, because on the train ride down to King’s Cross Station, someone’s Bludger gets loose from their luggage, and nearly kills Tommy. If Xanthia hadn’t cast a Freezing Charm at just the right moment, it would’ve smashed him through a window.

~

When Cyllene and Arachne Black first went to Azkaban, Echo steeled herself and visited once a week. They’d done wrong, they’d been tried and received Ministry justice, and now they were serving their jail time. None of that meant Echo had to stop treating them like family.

She could only stand so much time on the island though, even with her patronus sitting on her shoulder and her escort’s circling them, so she saved visits to extended family for winter solstice. Bellatrix did not appreciate Echo sticking a Muggle Christmas cracker through the bars and encouraging her to tug it. Sirius just shook his head at the offer, the years he even noticed her presence. Arachne sneered. Cyllene, though...Cyllene sneered too, but she’d grab it and pull, smirking when the expected bang made Echo jump.

One year after Voldemort’s defeat, Echo’s primary healer at St. Mungo’s wrote her a referral to a Muggle clinic, and Echo received her depression diagnosis. Six months later her healer said based on all the self-reporting of past experiences, her visits to Azkaban hadn’t _caused_ it, but _were_ making it worse.

“I can’t in good conscience keep prescribing this potion if you’re not going to make changes to your life to improve things,” the healer said. Echo sighed, asked a lot of questions, and ultimately reduced her visits to once every other month.

Winter solstice of 1994, Echo Black makes her usual rounds with the Christmas crackers (Arachne’s dead and Sirius escaped, now, but there’s Bellatrix and several others still there) with unusual speed, and then gleefully slaps her hands on the bars of her sister’s cell.

“No cracker, little mouse?” Cyllene sneers.

“Got you something better,” Echo says. “Remember when we were kids, and you said I was such an obnoxious, useless thing that I must be _proof_ the universe was out to get you, because otherwise you’d have a better sister?”

“And then you’d cry, yes, I remember.” Cyllene rolls her eyes.

“Behold.” Echo sticks a shiny, paper tube through the bars, but it’s not a cracker. Cyllene takes the rolled up magazine, eyebrows raising at the title of the article it’s open to.

“Huh,” Cyllene says.

“You owe me five sickles,” Echo says cheerfully. “I _told_ you we must have half-sibs out there.”

“You owe me five sickles first,” Cyllene says. “You only said that because I told you Mother couldn’t _possibly_ be the only woman Vee slept with. Especially since she only let him for rituals.” She keeps reading. “Isn’t Mara Diggory the Auror that arrested Mother? _She’s_ our half-sister?”

“That’s just the start,” Echo says. “We’ve found some more since this got written, though we’re trying to be quiet. Honestly at this point it’s a surprise the Potter kid _isn’t_ the arsehole’s grandson too.”

~

February rolls around. Cedric, Fleur, Harry, and Viktor all have their canon hostages for the Second Task. Nadine’s is Tommy, which makes Xanthia half-heartedly joke that Nadine loves him more than her.

“They probably just picked him ‘cause he’s the baby,” Nadine says, pulling pond-weed out of Tommy’s hair as they sit on the shore waiting for the remaining three Champions to surface with their hostages. Fleur is being held back trying to dive in after Gabrielle a second time, while everyone reassures her that her little sister is perfectly safe.

“I can hear you, you know,” Tommy says, not making any move to pull pond-weed out of his hair himself. Despite being under the Lake for some time, there’s still thick gobs of paint in it too.

“I’m just glad there weren’t any accidents down there,” Xanthia mutters. There’ve been four nearly-fatal or at least nearly-severely-injurious accidents around Tommy since they got back from winter break. The other Hufflepuffs have noticed and started never leaving him alone.

Xanthia wants to think they’re being paranoid. Sure, all the known Dark Lord spawn have been getting Howlers, anonymous letters laced with toxic materials, and mean-spirited pranks since the _Witch Weekly_ article, people unable to separate Voldemort from his offspring, but Tommy’s the only one having accidents. Xanthia would write it off as sexism, but neither Krum nor Diggory are having them. So maybe it’s a coincidence. But then again, those boys are just grandsons; someone with a grudge that’s sexist enough to single out Tommy over his sisters might care about that degree of closeness too.

It's troubling.


	15. ‘Cause That’s Just Who I Am This Week

The family reunion happens over spring break. Queenie Maplethorpe-Not-Argent makes dozens of anti-Muggle-repelling-ward-amulets (“I really do need a shorter name for these things!”) so that parents, siblings, spouses, etc, can come too. Echo Black somehow got a communication mirror the size of a paperback book set up in Cyllene’s cell years ago, and affixed her half of it to the conductor’s stand. Someone else found one the size of a television in the Room of Requirement and set it up on a tea trolley so that the three witches in America can chat with everyone.

All the Weasleys at Hogwarts plus Percy and their parents come to support Wendy and her mother Kay, which leads to Molly and her cousin Gregory awkwardly avoiding each other. Harry’s invited because he helped make this happen, and brings Hermione. Sirius Black risks being there for Harry because in the middle of all this mess Mara Diggory found out about Peter Pettigrew being alive and launched an investigation. Sirius isn’t _cleared_ yet, but the Kiss On Sight order (which several people are working to make illegal) has been suspended. He’s pretending to be Harry’s dog Snuffles just in case.

There’s a commotion when Wendy and Kay arrive on the grounds; a fifteen foot long acid-green snake is following the Seer around like a puppy.

“Miss Weasley!” Professor McGonagall says, stopping them in the entry hall. “Do not tell me you’ve brought the _basilisk_ back into this school!”

“No, Professor,” Wendy assures her. “Sheila is a perfectly normal snake! Her eyes don’t do anything that normal snake eyes don’t do, and she’s not venomous.” There’s a pause, in which her mother Kay seems to be holding in laughter. “She is poisonous though, so please don’t take a bite out of her. We couldn’t get rid of the toxicity entirely.”

“Get rid of,” McGonagall repeats flatly.

“Well…” Wendy rubs the back of her head with her free hand. Her other is holding her long white aluminum cane at an angle that makes her elbow stick out. Professor Moody swerves around her only to nearly trip over the snake and have to catch himself. Sheila hisses at him, but doesn’t lunge or even rear up at all.

“Sheila _used_ to be a basilisk,” Wendy explains. “But she didn’t like the goggles we made her, or how she was hungry for magic along with meat. Fortunately those Green sisters, you remember Opal and Raven? The magizoology and transfiguration prodigies? Well they came to study her, and figured out how to permanently change her into a normal snake. Sheila’s _much_ happier now.”

“That doesn’t explain why she is here, Miss Weasley,” McGonagall says.

“Because she’s destined to be a helper for someone that’ll be here today,” Wendy says, smiling brightly. “Dunno who yet! Real excited to meet ‘em. Speaking of which, can we head on up now? Can you show me and Mum where everyone is?”

McGonagall sighs and does so. As soon as they entire the choir room there’s a loud gasp and Queenie Maplethorpe says “Oh, aren’t you _gorgeous!”_ in parseltongue. She crouches down to coo over Sheila and gently stroke her, while Pip sighs, shaking their head, and smiles fondly.

 _“The uncrowned queen shall welcome her, and a world without fear she will show her,”_ Kay says, elbowing Wendy. “That was the prophecy for Sheila, right? Think this young lady's an uncrowned queen?”

“Well, my sister’s name is Regina, everyone calls her Queenie, and she was always the ringleader when we were kids,” Pip says, and then holds out a hand to shake. “Pip Maplethorpe, formerly Argent. Me and my big sis were a few years ahead of Wendy in school, and our little siblings a few years below. Nice to meet you.”

“Kay Weasley, nice to meet you too. My other children decided to stay home and meet you all later.”

“Does your sister have anxiety?” Wendy asks. Pip nods. “Great! Sheila’s hers, then. Intimidates rude people, gives very grounding hugs, and I’ve been told she’s a lovely color to look at.”

“What do you mean, Sheila’s mine?” Queenie asks, still in parseltongue, straightening up.

“Destiny, mate,” Wendy says, also in parseltongue. “Sheila needs a loving home and feels better when she’s protecting parselmouths. We just don’t have much for her to do out in the countryside. But you’ve been riling people up with that school consortium project, and now everyone’s ticked at us ‘cause of our dad being a murderous bastard. You’re perfect for each other!”

“School consortium?” someone asks from elsewhere in the room, and then Crystal McTavish climbs up on a table next to the mirrors and waves her arms.

“Hey! Everyone’s here! Time for introductions! And remember to speak a human language please, we’ve got guests!”

“Thank you for remembering, dear,” Emeline Prewett says, as Crystal climbs back down. “Sometimes Gregory and Mafalda get caught up in conversations with her corn snake and forget I can’t follow.”

Molly Weasley looks over from several conversation clusters away. “What do you mean, Gregory does that? Parseltongue is magic. Squibs don’t have it. Are you just humoring your daughter, Gregory?” She smiles. “That’s good of you.”

Gregory sighs. “Cuz, I told you last time we talked I prefer ‘hereditary Muggle’. And I _can_ talk with snakes. It’s just the _only_ inexplicable thing I can do.”

Molly blinks, and then puts a hand over her heart. “If our grandparents had known—”

“I don’t discuss my grandparents,” Gregory says sharply. Mafalda hisses something, and the corn snake draped over her shoulders rears up to hiss at Molly. _Settle down, tiny thing,_ Sheila hisses back, and the corn snake promptly hides in the hood of Mafalda’s sweatshirt (Mafalda is the sort of first year student to wear her uniform robes even on weekends, but dressed Muggle for her parents’ visit).

 _“EXCUSE ME!”_ Crystal yells. _“I said it’s time for introductions! And I want to meet those two cool people with my mom in the teevee!”_

“It’s a communications mirror, Crystal,” Kelly McTavish says, hands on her hips. She’s dressed like someone from a Western film, with a wand at one hip and bandolier of potions instead of a gun and bullets. “Not a teevee, and you _know_ that.” She waves to everyone in the room. “Hi, Kelly McTavish here, fastest cauldron in the West, mother of that little rascal Crystal. And these are…” She turns to the two witches next to her.

“April Griddle, vampire hunter,” April says. She’s got grey streaks in her hair and looks mildly amused by the proceedings. She’s wearing a sturdy brown leather jacket with a multitude of stains and scorch marks. “And this is Izzy Greengrass, my former trainee.”

“And half-sister, apparently,” Izzy says, waving. She’s got spiked hair, multiple piercing, and a studded black denim jacket. “Honestly it’s a relief my dad didn’t turn out to secretly be a vampire, I was worried about that for a bit, happened to one of our coworkers. Sorry we couldn’t make it, we’re busy.”

(Melia Greengrass turned down the reunion invitation because she doesn’t like leaving her tourist town (and is busy trying to curse Tom Riddle for deceiving her, now she knows his name, despite him theoretically being dead) and Tenerus turned it down because he dealt with enough drama around his mother and sister in his youth, thanks.)

(April's extended family try to stay out of her magic and monster related business, so's to not be a liability, and thus are simply passing along a hello.)

Echo taps the smaller mirror. “Your turn, sis.”

A woman wearing an Azkaban jumpsuit and lazy sneer says, “Cyllene Black, reformed practitioner of the Dark Arts, former Death Eater, and…” She peers through the mirror, looks around until finding Kay, and then says through gritted teeth, “Sorry for trying to kill you.”

“Really?” Kay says, eyebrows going up.

“Treating people as disposable makes the world a worse place, and thus more dangerous for myself, and so if I am granted parole I will refrain from trying to murder or cut bits off of anyone without their freely granted permission ever again, even Muggles.” Cyllene sneers through every single word. Then she glares at the side of the mirror where Echo is. “Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” Echo says. She gives a little wave. “Hi, Echo Black, herbologist, me and Cyllene knew Vee was our father since we were kids but it never seemed like a good idea to spread around.” In the bigger mirror, April and Izzy silently repeat “Vee” and then snicker. “I’m happy to learn we’ve got more family! And in case it’s hereditary on more than just our mom’s side, I think you all should know I have chronic depression. Some potions help with flare ups, but for long term treatment I’ve found Muggle medicine and talk therapy the most effective.”

“That was very brave of you to share with us,” Harmony says dreamily.

Wendy gasps. “Little buddy! Mum, why didn’t you tell me my cryptic remark buddy was here?”

“I didn’t know that was her,” Kay says, as Wendy and Harmony make their way across the choir room to each other, hugging directly in front of the mirrors. “She hadn’t introduced herself yet.”

“Hey, you got blue hair, cool!” Izzy says. She points at her own head. “Mine’s green, always has been. Love what you’re doing with those bobby-pins.”

Crystal makes an aggravated noise; Vonnie and Amy clap their hands over her mouth before she can yell “Introductions!” again. The message is conveyed, though, and Harmony says to the room at large, “I’m Harmony Starchild. My mother Bonnie decided not to come today because the moon is not in a good house for travel.”

“Nice to meet you, Harmony,” Kelly says. “Hon, why don't you and your friends all go next?”

“I’m Crystal McTavish!”

“Yvonne Yates, but everyone calls me Vonnie.” She points over to two Muggle women in the corner. “That’s my mum Eunice, and I think that’s Tabitha’s mum Trisha.” Trisha nods, giving a thumbs up.

“Rhadamanthys Rosier-Rowle,” Amy says. “My parents aren’t here because they’re trying to convince themselves the bloodline potion was misbrewed, because if it wasn’t they have to admit my mother cheated on my father with You-Know-Who.” Most of the room winces. Amy plasters on a big smile. “Anyway! Rhadamanthys is really long so you only have to call me that if we’re being formal, which Vonnie says family get-togethers aren’t, so you can call me Amy. The three of us solve mysteries!”

“Yeah, like the mystery of who’s trying to kill Tommy Maplethorpe!”

“Crystal!” Amy hisses, as nearly everyone yells _“WHAT.”_ “That’s not a piece of introduction information!”

“Someone is trying to kill my kid?” Maureen asks angrily.

“It’s just accidents, Mum,” Tommy says. “Nobody’s trying to kill me.”

“Bludger on the train,” Vonnie says, ticking the supposed accidents off on her fingers. “Ice on the moving staircase, mislabeled mobile plants in Herbology, suit of armor falling down the stairs—”

“Yeah, see, accidents!” Tommy shrugs emphatically. “That’s just how Hogwarts is.”

“We’ll discuss this later,” Maureen says. She smiles tightly at everyone. “Sorry if we were supposed to go in order around the room, but I’ll just go now. I’m Maureen Maplethorpe, currently trying to detangle my finances from a husband that went missing over a decade ago, and married me under a false identity. This is my oldest daughter Queenie, who’s networking with smaller magical schools in the United Kingdom to start a consortium. She’s doing amazing work.”

Queenie blushes. She’s now got Sheila draped all over her.

“My second oldest child Pip, recently graduated Oxford with a degree in linguistics, we’re very proud of them.” The Prewetts all look interested at Maureen’s gender-neutral wording and start sidling over.

“My second oldest daughter Nadine, Hogwarts Champion, we’re proud of her too. Youngest daughter Xanthia, we’d be prouder of her if she snuck out of chores less.”

“Mum!”

“And my son Tommy, he got petrified by a basilisk once and I almost pulled him out of this dangerous school, and if I’m not satisfied by the safety measures to prevent more _accidents,_ then removal is back on the table, thank you.”

 _Sorry about that,_ Sheila hisses to Tommy. _I did not recognize you. I am glad you were not killed._

“Thanks,” Tommy hisses back, petting her. Crystal clears her throat. “Oh!” Tommy says in English. “Sorry, I was just saying thank you for being sorry for petrifying me and for being glad I’m not dead.” Maureen covers her face in her hands, sighing.

They go around the room more. 

“Appoline Delacour, my husband Alphonse, our daughters Fleur, the Beaxbatons Champion, and Gabrielle.”

“Zora Krum, my son Viktor, Durmstrang's Champion. My husband couldn’t make it, he’s dealing with a vampire problem back home.” April and Izzy nod sympathetically.

“Mara Diggory, Auror. My husband Amos, our son Cedric, Champion of Hogwarts. My mother and grandparents were also busy today, but want you all to visit when you get the chance."

“Harry Potter, I somehow blew up the dad of half the people here after he killed my parents when I was a baby. This is my friend Hermione, that's my friend Ron, and this is Snuffles.”

“Ceinwen Weasley, call me Wendy. This’s my mum Kay, and that’s my Uncle Arthur and Aunt Molly and their kids.” She pats Harmony on the shoulder. “And you met Harmony, she’s the best at interpreting my prophecies, good at symbological thinking.”

“Gregory Prewett, my wife Emeline, our eldest daughter Mafalda. I’m a stockbroker, and I used to be an accountant; if anyone would like recommendations on professionals to help sort out the mess my father has made of your and your children’s finances, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

Eunice and Trisha both look relieved, and a notebook and pen materializes in Helen Green’s hands. “That’s good,” Helen says. “Because we’re having trouble getting the bank to admit our house _exists.”_ She sighs, and looks over at Maureen. “Hi, I’m Helen Green, and I am so sorry I never contacted you before. He went by Thomas Argent with me too, and did _not_ tell me he was married until I’d had the twins. These are my daughters Opal and Raven, by the way.”

Maureen shrugs and sighs. “Apparently he married April and May’s mothers under false names too, then faked his death twice. I don’t have any idea where fidelity is owed. The man was a lying creep.”

“And on that note,” May says. “Hi, I spent decades thinking my father was a dead army captain. I’m May Green, fun coincidence with the names there, even if mine apparently started as a sham, I’ve made it real. This is my wonderful wife Jeanie—”

“Oh, hey Professor Byrnes!” Pip says, waving. Jeanie laughs and waves back.

“—and our eldest son Iggy.” A man who looks to be a few years younger than Sirius waggles his fingers at the room. 

“That’s gonna get confusing,” Izzy says. “And I refuse to go by Ismenia ever again. What’s yours short for? You can call me Hunter Greengrass if you hate yours too.”

“Icarus,” Iggy says. “And it’s not my mums’ fault, you can blame the older models for that.” He grins at May and Jeanie. “I traded up.”

Syrinx has been hanging out on Tabitha’s shoulder in crow form (Mara got both of them registered as Animagi over the winter break so they didn’t have to worry about hiding it (Tabitha had been alarmed to learn something she could do innately was considered illegal)) and now jumps onto the risers as a human. “Icarus _Selwyn?”_

“Gawds, not for _years,”_ Iggy says. “Mum May and Mum Jeanie adopted me after I ran away, I’m a Green-Byrnes now. We did it thoroughly enough to cut all my legal ties to the Selwyns.”

“Did you have a sister named Ianthe?” Syrinx asks, eyes wide.

“Er, yeah,” Iggy says. “She died, though. In Azkaban.”

Syrinx’s jaw drops. “You’re my _uncle!_ Great Aunt and Uncle told me you were _dead!”_

“Well, shit,” Iggy says, eyes going wide too. “Nice to meet you…?”

“Syrinx. I’m your nephew Syrinx Selwyn.”

“Hey, hey Syrinx!” Cyllene yells from her mirror. “Bird boy! Why’s your raven form so small?”

“Uh, I’m a crow,” Syrinx says.

“An _adolescent_ crow,” Tabitha says, and promptly turns into a juvenile Norwegian Forest cat. Syrinx picks her up and holds her against his chest, her front paws needling affectionately on his shoulder.

“This is Tabitha Tuft, by the way,” Syrinx says.

“That’s my girl!” Trisha yells. “She’s so talented!” Tabitha purrs loudly.

“Fuck yeah Animagi!” Cyllene promptly turns into a large raven, croaks gothically several times, and turns back. “Shit I _really_ need to get out on parole now and teach you to fly.” She taps on the mirror glass. “Hey, hey Echo, show ‘em what you turn into.”

“Not until Tabitha turns back, thank you very much,” Echo says firmly.

“How about ours?” Raven says. Opal grins, and a moment later instead of two witches standing on the risers, there are two Eurasian eagle-owls flying through the room. Opal is leucistic, mostly white feathers with black ear-tufts. Raven is melanistic, mostly black feathers with white ear tufts. They circle the room with great swoops of their wings, then turn human again on the spot on the risers they started, and high-five.

“Are you seriously telling me even the half-sister _named_ Raven doesn’t turn into a raven?” Cyllene whines. _“Owls_ are you _kidding_ me.”

“Our patronuses are owls too,” Opal says, grinning at her. “Snowies.”

“Harry,” Hermione says. “Didn’t you tell me that when Hagrid gave you Hedwig, it was the first birthday present you could ever remember getting? And that’s one of the memories you use to summon your patronus?” She turns to the twins. “I know you hated people gossiping about how your scars match Harry’s, when you were at Hogwarts with us, but this seems like an awfully big coincidence. Hedwig is a snowy owl.”

“No worries, Granger,” Raven says. “This is definitely a day for pointing out coincidences.”

“Time is circular,” Harmony says. “Magic likes to stick its fingers in the pond and twirl. If the agony of the Killing Curse can echo through time to turn the twins into mirrors, why not the happiness of a first gift as well?”

“I thought you were big on linear time,” Syrinx says, frowning at Harmony. “The sun marching through, uh, constellation houses?”

“Progressing,” Harmony says. “And that progression is not only circular, but spherical.”

“Oh.”

“Enduring echoes call out from his past,” Wendy says, nodding sagely. Kay covers her mouth with her fist, making a _snerk_ noise. “Time’s not for saving, no. Time’s not for that.”

“Your hair didn’t glow,” Ron says, peering at his cousin. “And that barely rhymed. That wasn’t even a prophecy, was it? You’re just messing with us.”

“I was quoting Jimmy Buffet,” Wendy says. Most of the Muggles and Muggleborns present giggle.

“She was also referencing the title of another fic by this work’s writer,” Harmony says.

_Hey! Leave the fourth wall alone! It’s fragile!_

“Okay, have fun with all that,” Izzy says, looking distractedly at a compass from which a loud whirring sound is emanating.

“We have to go,” April says. Something beeps. She pulls a Muggle pager from the inside pocket of her leather jacket, looks at it, and puts it away again. “Atlanta, again.”

“Shit.” Izzy stands up, pocketing the compass, and disappears out of frame. “Thanks for the mirror loan, McTavish! Catch you later.”

“I’d better go too,” Kelly says. She tips the brim of her Stetson hat to them all. “See you in June, Crystal. Love you!”

“Love you too Mom!” Crystal yells. She, Vonnie, and Amy have been scribbling everyone’s names and some notes down on pocket-sized spiralbound notebooks during the introductions. The big mirror goes dark.

“You know…” Pip says, after there’s a moment of everyone not knowing what to do now introductions are over. “If Dad used so many fake identities and murdered people, do you think most of his money’s stolen?”

“Oh for _sure,”_ Cyllene says. Everyone looks at the smaller mirror, which makes her smile. “He and our mother used to chat about the pros and cons of scamming people versus just killing them and taking all their stuff, and fencing things in the Muggle underground _and_ Knockturn Alley.”

There’s a string of cursing from most of the adults that makes Emeline Prewett press her hands over Mafalda’s ears.

“Right,” Mara Diggory says. “Time to get it all back to the people it belongs to.” She looks at Gregory. “The MLE and Aurors have been sharing files on him, since the aliases came to light, but our forensic accounting department is tiny. Do you know anyone in that field that knows about magic, or can handle learning about it?”

“Oh yes,” Gregory says, adjusting his glasses. (They’re fake, by the way, he started wearing them early in his accounting job when it made people take him more seriously, and kept it up after switching to stockbroking.) He and Mara head over to a corner, pulling out notebooks.

“Not _all_ of it’s stolen,” Syrinx says, heading over too, still carrying Tabitha. Harmony trails along, humming. “At least not by him. Great Aunt and Uncle complain all the time about my grandparents making him their liege lord and tying up the Wizengamot seat and some finances with him, instead of just _donating_ money to the Death Eaters, and how hard it is to untangle when the only proof of his death was the explosion, abandoned wand, and all those people coming out of Imperius.”

“You have _liege lords?”_ Crystal says. Amy elbows her. “Ow! What, I looked up the British _Muggle_ government when I got my letter, not the magical one! Mom didn’t know if they were different! I thought you had a parliament like Canada’s.”

“I wonder,” Vonnie says. “If Harry really did blow him up, does that make Harry the new liege lord by right of conquest?” Harry looks alarmed at this idea. Snuffles lets out a doggy snort. Hermione looks intrigued.

Everyone breaks up into different clusters to talk, moving in and out of conversations. Maureen interrogates the Girl Detectives about Tommy’s spate of accidents while he insists it’s not a big deal. Harry leaves Snuffles with them for a bit to go ask Echo and Cyllene about helping someone who’s been in Azkaban for a long time. Tabitha turns human again to go to ask the Delacours and Krums about the magical world outside Britain.

Queenie chats with May and Kay about her consortium work; Hogwarts is the only school that the Ministry of Magic covers tuition for. The others rely on fees or complicated paperwork to get normal Department of Education funding. Queenie wants them to band together to share resources, and to better petition the Ministry for tuition coverage as well. “Students ought to have more options than Hogwarts, homeschooling, or taking on debt! If there’d been a magical school closer to home that I qualified for, I’d have gone there instead.” She holds up one of the anti-Muggle-repelling-wards-amulets. It’s slightly larger than a playing card, made of metal with runes stamped onto it, and strung on a lanyard. “I’ve been making loads of these, so parents can come and talk directly with the administrations about what they want their children to get out of their schooling, or urge them to join the consortium.”

“You mean these visitor’s passes?” Trisha asks, leaning over May’s shoulder, fidgeting with the one Maureen mailed to her when organizing this reunion. “They’re nifty.”

“A _Visitor’s Pass!”_ Queenie beams at her. “Thank you! That’s a much shorter name than anti-Muggle-repelling-wards-amulet.”

When the forensic accounting talk wraps up Harmony loops one arm through Emeline’s and one through Pip’s and brings them over to Gregory and Syrinx as Mara heads off to rescue her son from being embarrassed to death by his father (Amos is _extremely_ proud of Cedric being Hogwarts Champion). “Hullo,” Harmony says. “Syrinx and I have _lots_ of questions for the three of you.”

“We do?” Syrinx says.

“Oh yes,” says Harmony, and then there is a very important conversation between the two older adults, one young adult, and two teens. It’s also highly personal for all five of them, so we’re going to leave them be.

We could eavesdrop on Wendy trading music album recommendations with Nadine and Raven, or Opal egging Amos Diggory into bragging about Cedric more, or Xanthia sharing efficient study habit ideas with Hermione. We could observe that Fred, George, and Ginny are rigging up harmless pranks (confetti that explodes twice into larger confetti, humming balloons that call you rude names if you pop them) to keep the mood light, while Percy tries to stop them without alerting anyone else so’s not to be a distraction. We could listen in on Professor Jeanie Byrnes comforting her son Iggy on the overwhelming emotions he’s having about the reminder of his big sister’s death and the sudden reveal that he has a nephew he never met until now, though that one also seems rather personal.

Let’s check in on the Black sisters. With Tabitha human again, Echo’s willing to show off her Animagus form (she can still speak parseltongue in it, which means the snakes present are not an issue). Cyllene is having some feelings, seeing the field mouse gamboling all over the tea trolley the other mirror is on, eliciting squeals of delight from several of their half-sibs and...stepmothers? Is that the right word? Morgana preserve her, they have in-laws now too, and niblings. Ianthe Selwyn’s obnoxious baby brother Icarus is _Iggy Green-Byrnes_ now, and is therefore her _nephew,_ yet is also the uncle of her babiest half-brother. She’s got a niece named Mafalda with a Muggle mother and a Squib— shit no Gregory said that was the wrong word. A hereditary Muggle father. Her niece is a Muggleborn, what the fuck.

Anyway, Echo as a mouse is making Cyllene increasingly aware that it’s been _years_ since she could properly stretch her wings, and results in her hollering, “Hey Diggory! Can you speed up my parole hearing if I give you more intel?”

“Depends on the intel,” Mara says, narrowing her eyes. “And it still has to go through the proper channels.”

“Cool, cool, whatever,” Cyllene says. “Vee liked to brag about his Dark Arts achievements to our mother and his Death Eaters. He kept it cryptic so they couldn’t copy him, but I always figured out what he meant.”

“Because he’s not as clever as he thinks he is,” Echo mutters in parseltongue from atop the tea trolley.

“I’m talking to Auror Diggory, not you,” Cyllene says, rolling her eyes, and confusing everyone who can’t hear a field mouse hissing. “I know how many horcruxes Vee intended to make and where three of them are.”

“He made _WHAT!”_ roars Sirius, shocked back into human form.

“Sirius Black!” Molly Weasley yells in alarm, pointing at him.

“Mum it’s fine he didn’t actually kill anybody,” Ron says.

“Yes, he’s only wanted for questioning now,” Mara says, eyes still narrowed at Cyllene, barely listening to anyone else.

“Those things are so foul _my_ great-grandfather killed his cousin for making one and destroyed it!” Sirius yells. _“My_ family thinks they’re too evil! What the hell do you mean he made _three!”_

“He _meant_ to make _six,”_ Cyllene says, shimmying a little and tossing her hair. Azkaban does not have good hair care opportunities, but spending a lot of time in raven form has kept it from getting as bad as most other prisoners’. “Split his soul into seven bits.”

“Okay!” Echo says, human again, clapping her hands once. “Not a conversation to have around children! Very nasty gross murder magic! Cyllene, tell Auror Diggory where the three you know about are without embellishment, or postpone this conversation.”

“Even with a new sister that’s an _Auror_ you are still the least fun sister in existence,” Cyllene says. “And proof the universe is out to get me. I can’t do it without embellishment, what if I forget something important?”

“I’ll be over with some colleagues to discuss this further, Ms. Black,” Mara says, in full formal Auror mode. “Immediately.” She bows to the room at large, kisses her husband on the cheek, hugs her son, and leaves.

“What’s a horcrux?” the majority of the people in the room whisper loudly to the person nearest them.

“A vessel for a piece of one’s soul,” Sirius says shakily. Harry comes over and leans against his side; it’s not natural to him yet to hold hands or hug people, but it seems like the right thing to do. Sirius wraps an arm over his shoulders. “It anchors you to this world in the event of your death, allowing you to possess people. Or theoretically inhabit an entirely new body, but no one’s proved that yet.”

“Ex-excuse me,” Trisha Tuft says, raising her hand in the air, trembling. “Are you saying souls are provabley real? Does that mean all those ghosts we saw on the way in here are lost souls? Unable to move on? And that those dementors Tabitha told me about really do steal souls, not just put people in comas?”

“The ghosts, no,” Xanthia reassures her. “I looked into it when I got here, they’re just a very strong personality impression, like those portraits. Some theorists posit that they become their own people and may gain a soul over the centuries of their existence, but that’s not any more provable than the originals having souls either.”

“And there’s massive debate about the dementors,” Echo says. “Which is one reason why I and many other people are petitioning to eradicate them, rather than continuing to use Azkaban as a honeypot trap for the horrid things.”

“I’m sorry,” Eunice says. “I understand that Azkaban is a jail. And we got a letter last year saying its guards would be patrolling outside the school. Are the guards...these dementors you’re talking about? And they can suck people’s souls out?”

“Mm-hm,” all the wizarding parents say, nodding with their lips pressed into tight lines.

Eunice, Trisha, Helen, and Maureen all exchange looks. “Who do I write to to protest this?” Eunice asks, as the others nod agreement. “It doesn’t sound like they should be guarding prisoners, let alone allowed near a school full of children.”

“I’ve got all the names and offices you want,” Queenie says, pulling a notebook from the depths of her peacoat. Sheila shifts around her shoulders to stay balanced comfortably. “Minister of Magic, the Office for Magical Education, the liaison in the Muggle Department of Education…”

Conversation breaks back up into small groups again after that, with Echo nudging Cyllene into giving the other three bird Animagi advice. Sirius turns back into Snuffles, to avoid discussing his dubious legal status, and also because he’s feeling very grossed out by the idea of Voldemort making multiple horcruxes, and it’s easier to deal with that as a dog than a human. Harry scratches behind his ears.

And in the corridor outside, under the guise of Professor Moody making sure no one harasses the guests and students, Barty Crouch Jr. carefully notes who attends. He can’t eavesdrop, with multiple veterans of the first Voldemort war laying anti-spy charms as soon as they arrived, but he _can_ memorize their faces as they arrive and leave.

They’re his master’s family, after all.

He should know who they are.


	16. I’ve Been Dying To Tell You Anything You Want To Hear

The prophecy strikes in the entry hall as everyone is leaving. Well, as all the guests are leaving. None of the current students are bothering to go home for the short spring break, especially with the excitement of the Triwizard Tournament, and the Opal and Raven are still staying in their tent next to Hagrid’s Hut.

As soon as someone opens the main door and floods the entry hall with sunlight, Wendy goes rigid, her cane ceasing its testing of the stones ahead of her, and the streak of black hair amidst her red locks glows. A prophecy rolls out of her mouth, full of rhyme and symbols.

The Girl Detectives excitedly write it down, and start trying to solve it the instant Wendy goes silent. Harmony looks at them, looks at Wendy getting her bearings again, looks at everyone who’s never seen Wendy do a prophecy before looking awed, and at everyone else just as excited to puzzle it out as the three junior detectives.

Harmony steps up to Wendy, taps her arm to get her attention, and whispers, “It was about a snake somebody’ll have the chance to rescue. It’s going to be in danger soon, and _be_ a danger, but with the right choices it can become a friend.”

“Nice,” Wendy says, and tilts her head slightly to one side. “Sounds like everyone’s having fun puzzling it out.”

“Mm-hm,” Harmony says. “If they don’t solve it by the time they need to, I’ll tell them.”

“Thanks,” Wendy says. She shakes herself a bit. “Glad the Hands of Fate didn’t reach out to smack me on one of the moving staircases again. I hate those bloody things.”

~

When classes start again, Professor Moody asks Syrinx about his mother.

“Died in Azkaban, loyal to the end,” Moody says, staring at Syrinx with his flesh eye, as the glass one whirls around dizzyingly. “Told everyone her master was coming for her. Any idea what brought on that certainty?”

“Didn’t...didn’t all the loyal ones say You-Know-Who was coming for them?” Syrinx asks, extremely uncomfortable. He doesn’t want to talk about his Death Eater mother with an ex-Auror, let alone Professor Alastor ‘Constant Vigilance!’ Moody, who’d mentioned in their very first class after demonstrating the Cruciatus Curse on a spider that Ianthe Selwyn was known to be skilled in casting it.

“Mm, that they did,” Moody says. “She had more time than the rest to notice he wasn’t, though, stuck in that Ministry holding cell, pregnant with...you. But she stayed certain.”

Syrinx’s stomach knots. Unlike Tabitha, he never took the bloodline potion; he doesn’t need the confirmation, and he doesn’t want anyone but the new family he’s found to know. He even went to the reunion in his crow form on Tabitha’s shoulder...oh no. He forgot to leave the same way! He left as a human and Moody was there!

“In mythology, Syrinx was a nymph, Mr. Selwyn,” Moody says, and the worry over people knowing he’s Voldemort’s kid instantly turns into worry of a different kind. “Nymphs tend to be girls. Any idea why your mother picked it? Some mythic destiny in mind for you?”

“It was for the plants,” Syrinx blurts out, completely panicked. He honestly has no idea why his mother picked the name she did. “I have class now bye Professor!” He bolts down the hall.

A week later, a marble bust that’s sat securely for two centuries on a plinth by an overhead walkway’s railing falls over it, and misses Syrinx by inches.

~

“Bloody horcruxes,” Mara Diggory says, pouring herself a finger of scotch from Dumbledore’s collection. She and the Headmaster sit across his desk from each other, both tired, yet thrumming with purpose. “Maniac tried to make six of the damn things, and we only know of three for sure.”

“The Diary, the Ring, and the Locket,” Dumbledore says. Mara has kept him updated on the Aurors’ search, and he in turns has told her everything he learned of Tom Riddle’s obsessions since first _suspecting_ horcruxes two years ago.

Tom Riddle’s diary now sits on the desk between then, next to the bottle of scotch, and an obsidian dagger. The dagger has a silver handle with a gemstone set in the pommel, the exact same shade of acid green as the former basilisk, and a sheath of silver and dragonhide (sourced from a dragon which sheds).

“Would you care to do the honors?” Dumbledore asks.

“We should probably put it in a bowl or something,” Mara says. “Or we’re going to ruin your desk.”

“Ah, yes, thank you.” Dumbledore summons an old cooking pot from the Hogwarts kitchens, one they’d be replacing soon anyway. He sets it on the desk and drops the diary unceremoniously inside. Mara stands up, slams back her scotch, unsheathes the dagger, and plunges it into the diary. There’s a terrible scream, and a gush of ink.

Mara cleans the blade, sheaths it, pours herself another scotch and sits back down.

“Was that patricide, do you think?” she asks.

“I believe it was justice,” Dumbledore says. Mara snorts at the evasion but doesn’t pursue it. He’s right; every horcrux was created through murder.

“Nice of those girls to loan us these,” Mara says instead, nudging the dagger with the bottom of her shot glass. _Those girls._ It’s still hard to think of any of them as her siblings. As family. She knows they are, but...she doesn’t _know_ them, not like she knows her mother’s family. But she used to not know her husband’s family either, and now she can’t imagine life without them, mad as they drive her.

“Yes, remarkable work.” Dumbledore picks up the dagger to examine. “Transfigured from a basilisk fang...in order to change the nature of the creature itself. To make it happier. How many did they make?”

“They didn’t say, I didn’t ask.” Opal and Raven had told her this particular dagger was “On loan to the Auror department, and a gift to your family once this quest for that murderous asshole’s soul vessels is done.” Mara holds her shot glass up and eyes the liquid inside. “We _suspect_ that famed Cup of Helga Hufflepuff’s you told us of is another horcrux, and we’ve got all the warrants for it, but of course the Lestranges are fighting letting us into the vault. Not _sure_ where Rowena Ravenclaw’s Diadem is, though there’s a team who talked to the Grey Lady scouring Albania. Much thanks to the Tuft girl knowing Hogwarts’ history so well and pointing us her way for a chat.”

“Bathilda Bagshot does make for a most elucidating neighbor,” Dumbledore says, earning a grin from Mara.

“No sign of any dark magic on Godric's Gryffindor’s Sword, not that Riddle ever got his hands on it, no other known artefacts of Gryffindor’s still around. The curse breaking team thinks we’ll be able to get through protections on the Gaunt Ring this week, and then it’s going the same way as that messy book in there.” She jerks her chin at the cooking pot.

“And the Locket of Salazar Slytherin.”

Mara groans, finishes off the second glass, and drops her head into her hands. “Black won’t tell us _anything else_ until she’s out on parole. She wants to be _part of the team to go after it._ She’s even agreed to the lifetime ban on owning a wand again if it means she gets to destroy a piece of her father’s soul. One minute she says it’s payback for being a shitty war leader, the next it’s for being a deadbeat dad, the next it’s for giving her the world’s ugliest tattoo, which, by the way, the Auror department was _fascinated_ to learn about. Damn thing used to be near invisible, and now it’s red, like a birthmark, which has everyone on edge.”

“Mm.” Dumbledore swirls his own glass of scotch. “Cyllene has been in Azkaban for a long time. It isn’t known to make people stable. Despite the shifting claims of motivation, her determination to see this through is impressive.”

“Yes, but the shifting does _not_ help the parole board come to a decision.”

“Ah.”

“Did you know the other Ms. Black got her a therapist?” Mara says, looking up. Dumbledore raises his brows. “A decade ago! That’s why the communications mirror was installed, with all sorts of enchantments to prevent it from being broken or removed from the wall, so it's not a danger to anyone. Cyllene Black has been talking through her issues once a month with a professional for the past ten years.”

“I did know, actually,” Dumbledore says quietly. “You may have noticed my signature on several of the forms.” He flicks one of the many complicated magical instruments on his desk. “It was a pilot program. I’m surprised you were unaware of it.”

“Well if I can get her out on parole and this horcrux hunt goes well, it better bloody well stop being a _pilot_ program and get launched in full!”

Dumbledore smiles at her vehemence. “I’m so glad to hear you say that, Auror Diggory. I believe your support could be instrumental in expanding the program.”

“Work a lot better if we can get rid of the bloody dementors.”

“Yes. Yes it would.”

~

“It’s not against the rules, I checked twice,” Xanthia says, as Nadine casts spell after spell in her favorite practice room, the afternoon before the final Task. Xanthia has textbooks with her, to study for her remaining sixth year exams. Nadine’s NEWTs are already over. “In some centuries Champions were even _expected_ to have squires or minstrels with them.”

“I’m winning this myself, Xanthia,” Nadine says. Her silently cast Levitation Charm sends one dummy careening into two others.

“I’m not helping you win,” Xanthia says. “I won’t interfere with _anything_ that seems like it belongs in a Maze. But Nadine…” Xanthia bites her lip. “The accidents are happening around Tommy _and_ Syrinx now. I know they're both the boys—”

“So’s Uncle Gregory, and they’re not happening to him,” Nadine says. Gregory is technically their older half-brother, but it just _feels_ right to call him ‘uncle’.

“Uncle Gregory’s an adult,” Xanthia says. “Who doesn't live at Hogwarts. And since he’s a hereditary Muggle and kept his name out of the paper, everyone assumes Mafalda’s the Dark Lord Spawn, not him.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Nadine says. “Like, the timing. Auntie Emeline got pregnant _after_ Dad died.”

“People don’t like admitting a wizard as strong as Dad could have a kid with no magic, so they tie their thinking in knots. _Anyway,_ what I’m saying is, first it was Tommy, now it’s Syrinx too, and maybe it’s ‘cause they’re boys and the Mystery Saboteur is sexist, or _maybe_ it’s a coincidence, and sooner or later we’ll _all_ be having accidents.” Xanthia stops trying to sound logical and detached and flings her arms around her sister. “I don’t want somebody getting away murdering you ‘cause I’m not there!”

“Ugh, Xanthia, I’m practicing, get off!” Xanthia clings harder and Nadine rolls her eyes before patting her on the top of the head. “Fine, okay, you win, you can come with me.”

“Yes!”

“But you _have_ to stay invisible, no matter what,” Nadine says. “Until it’s over and we’re all out of the Maze, okay? And stay out of the way, I don’t want _you_ getting hurt either. You passed all the Apparition tests so you could get your license next year, right? If something goes wrong get out of the Maze and get help.”

“No heroics, got it,” Xanthia says. She lets go, grinning. “I’m the bookworm, remember? I’ll play it safe.”

“Good.”

~

“Cup’s destroyed,” Mara Diggory says, meeting with Dumbledore the evening before the final Task. Far below his office, out in one of the greenhouses, Echo Black is catching up with Professor Sprout. Cyllene sits in a corner on an overturned bucket, rolling her eyes, and wearing magic-suppressing cuffs that are one of Malia Greengrass’s prototypes. That furious witch has been working on all sorts of ways to avenge herself on Riddle since long before she knew his name. The ones Cyllene sports were rejected for wearing off after a week; she’s been out of Azkaban for six days now. “The Ring too.”

“That is good news,” Dumbledore says. “Any word from Albania?” Mara shakes her head. Dumbledore strokes his beard. “When this Tournament is over and the students returned to their homes, I shall be free to assist in the search. What of the Locket?”

“Going after it tomorrow.” Mara rubs her temples. “Black knew all the plans for its protections, but not the exact location. But apparently her cousin Regulus Black figured it out.”

“That poor, foolish boy,” Dumbledore says sadly. “You know Mara, I can never manage to be angry with Voldemort’s supporters who died so young; they never had the chance to grow past their families’ prejudices, to learn.”

“Oy vey,” Mara says, hands rubbing her temples pausing. “Did I forget to tell you? We found him alive.”

“...pardon?”

Mara nods. “Draught of Living Death. Riddle caught him going after the Locket to destroy it, wanted to make an example of him, but was in a rush and had the Draught on hand. Mr. Black has been in an attic room in that mausoleum of a house in London for fourteen years, guarded by a house elf named Kreacher.”

“My word,” Dumbledore says. “But his parents were still alive when the war ended?”

“First Riddle threatened them into keeping quiet until he could decide a dire punishment,” Mara explains. “And guessing from the way Mrs. Black’s portrait was shrieking, they considered his betrayal of Riddle a betrayal of the family; his name had been blasted off their family tree wallpaper, too, just like his older brother’s. I really don’t know what they were thinking _after_ the war, but when they died Kreacher just kept...dusting the room, and keeping pests out, and…”

The Auror trails off, staring into the distance. Dumbledore waits patiently for a few minutes, and then gently prompts her. “Mara?”

“Kreacher was gathering potion ingredients for the antidote,” Mara says, blinking back tears, her voice choked up. “House elves can’t brew, their magic works too differently, but he had every advanced potions book from their library all lined up in that room, open to the antidote instructions. And he just kept...gathering ingredients. Tools. His former mistress’s order to guard the family secrets kept him from getting help, but he never gave up.”

Dumbledore summons her a handkerchief. Mara wipes her eyes and blows her nose. She clears her throat.

“Cyllene Black had no idea, she’d thought Riddle had killed him. Felt guilty, actually, since she was the one to tell Riddle her cousin was going after his treasure, not knowing what it was then. We only found him because Sirius Black went straight to Grimmauld Place after the courts cleared him last week to free Kreacher and see if the Diadem or Locket were there.”

“I can imagine the reunion was quite overwhelming for both of them.”

“Happened yesterday, actually, once the antidote finished brewing. They immediately had a screaming row, before hugging it out.” Mara laughs quietly, shaking her head. “Hell of a family to be related to.” She holds up one hand as Dumbledore opens his mouth. “Please do not take this moment to remind me of Aberforth and the goats, I know you only mention it to embarrass him.”

“It’s my job as his older brother,” Dumbledore says, eyes twinkling merrily. “Perhaps finding something to tease Cyllene and Echo about will raise your spirits, as well.”

“You know,” Mara says, smiling. “It just might.”


	17. A Loaded God Complex, Cock It And Pull It

“Here we are!” Cyllene declares, throwing her arms out wide on the edge of the cliff. It had been a bright, sunny June day when the Aurors, Cyllene, Opal, and Raven arrived in the nearby Muggle village. Now a storm has rolled in, and rain pelts them all. “Directions courtesy of my baby cousin!”

Regulus Black is a lot more ‘baby’ to Cyllene than he was before, having been perpetually stuck at age nineteen in an attic, while she reached age thirty-nine stuck in Azkaban. Regulus is currently at Hogwarts with his brother Sirius, meeting Harry before the final Task, due to start that evening. Yesterday both brothers spent some time in the Ministry’s Animagus department, registering their forms in order to avoid any more unfortunate run-ins with unforgiving and unevenly enforced wizarding laws.

(Regulus is a pipistrelle bat, by the way, as cute as Echo’s field mouse and as gothic as Cyllene’s raven.)

“This doesn’t look like a cave,” one of the Aurors says dubiously.

“We have to get down the cliff,” Cyllene says with a nasty grin. She promptly steps over the edge and swoops down to one of the rocks in her Animagus form, and croaks mockingly as everyone rushes to the edge to look for her. Opal and Raven roll their eyes, turn into eagle-owls, and join her. The Aurors pull brooms for the extendable pockets sewn into their robes, and fly down too. Cyllene flies off again, this time into the jagged gash in the cliff face.

Cyllene turns human in front of a blank patch of rock. “Anyone have a _normal_ knife on them? One of us has to pay in blood to open the door, and I don’t fancy finding out how gruesome a death basilisk venom provides.”

“Here,” a different Auror than before says, pulling out a completely nonmagical pocketknife. Before they can do anything with it, Cyllene snatches it away, slices her arm right over the Dark Mark, and splatters blood on the rock. An archway shimmers into existence as she hands the knife back. The Auror cleans it with a grimace.

A ways into the spooky cave, Cyllene stops, and points to a seemingly normal bit of the rocky path. Blood drips dramatically down her arm, the Auror to offer a healing charm only able to get the gash _mostly_ closed up.

“Water’s full of Infiri, but there’s a boat you can summon.” One Auror waves their wand, and a metal chain begins coiling itself on the rock, eventually revealing an extremely tiny boat. Cyllene smirks at the groans. “It can carry one full grown witch or wizard, and maybe an underage or non-human sidekick. And you really, really want more than one witch retrieving the Locket out on that island.” She gestures lazily to the green glow in the distance. “One to drink the poison that protects it, one to _make_ them drink, and if needed fight off the Infiri. That’s why baby Reggie never got it; too soft-hearted. His house elf already got dragged out here once by Vee to test the protections, and Reggie didn’t want to bring him back unless completely necessary.”

“So he boated out by himself and gave up?” a third Auror asks.

“Oh no, he _flew_ out there by himself, and spent too much time thinking through all the possibilities.” Opal and Raven make noises of understanding for why Cyllene invited them along. She turns the smirk towards them. “Clever birdies, yes, you’re here to avoid the boat. I don’t _think_ it’s rigged to set off the Infiri, since Vee would want to check the Locket occasionally, but it _might_ be.”

“Why are _we_ even here, then?” an Auror whines.

“To applaud my cleverness, duh,” Cyllene says. She rolls her eyes. “And because the parole order says either an Auror or Echo has to be with me at all times for the first year and she has a _life_ now.”

With that, Cyllene spreads her wings and flies out to the island, followed by Opal and Raven. All three witches tense as they land, and then as they turn human, but the dead bodies floating just under the surface of the lake remain peaceful. Cyllene pulls a wooden cup from her black velvet dress. She had to unpack a lot of cardboard boxes Echo had in storage to get both things (“What do you _mean_ you stripped everything out of the house and then _burned it?_ It’s been in the family for centuries!” “It was so soaked in Dark Magic the walls would start _bleeding_ during thunderstorms! The place was a nightmare!”) but she’s glad she did. The cup has a good grip. It won’t slip and go clattering into the lake no matter how slippery the poison is.

And the dress...fits her perfectly no matter what and has an extendable pocket sewn into the top of the bodice so she can dramatically pull hidden items out of her cleavage. Cyllene _loves_ this dress, and the fact that Echo put preserving charms on the cardboard boxes so it didn’t get eaten by moths or smell musty means that Echo loves her too.

“I’ll be drinking Vee’s nasty cocktail, of course,” Cyllene says. She scoops up a cupful of poison as the twins raise their eyebrows, and, just in case they’re lucky, tries pouring it out on the rocks. It doesn’t budge from the cup. Damn.

“Because you don’t have a wand and you’re a bit too wiped out from Azkaban to wandlessly cast fireballs if the Infiri act up,” Raven says, nodding.

“Oh come on,” Cyllene mutters. “You’re supposed to gasp and ask why I’m making this sacrifice!”

Opal rolls her eyes, sighs, and pitches her voice high and breathy to ask, “Oh no, dear long lost sister! How can you make such a sacrifice for us? Do you truly have a loving heart after all? Our other long lost sister was so wrong to call you a selfish, bloodthirsty drama queen!”

_“Thank_ you,” Cyllene says, and swallows the first cupful of poison.

~

“Mum!” Nadine hugs Maureen, overjoyed to see her. “They told us everyone’s families were visiting before the Task, but I worried—”

“Queenie told me to keep this Visitor’s Pass, remember?” Maureen says, hugging her daughter back. Queenie and Pip are hugging Xanthia and Tommy, and then everyone swaps around. “Oh, we’ve got a surprise for you!” Maureen hands Nadine a small package. “April and Izzy mailed this to pass along to you, it had to come by regular airmail because of...harmonic resonances or something.”

Nadine opens the package, her four full siblings peering over her shoulder curiously. Her half-siblings currently attending Hogwarts gave her a “We’re Rooting For You!” card at breakfast and then ran off to take exams.

The package contains a compass and a piece of printer paper. On one side is a hand-written note reading “Sorry we couldn’t make it! Have fun!” On the other are printed instructions in a large, tidy font on how to use the compass to tell which non-human magical creature surrounding you is the most dangerous. Nadine looks at the compass; it has five differently sized needles, all of which are idly spinning.

“Cool,” Nadine says, and slips it into her pocket.

(It will not come in useful at _all_ today, but is nonetheless a very nifty piece of magic.)

~

“No, _no,”_ Cyllene sobs, arms wrapped around herself. Opal and Raven exchange an uneasy look. Then Raven takes up a guarding position, and Opal scoops more poison out of the basin and tips it down Cyllene’s throat.

“Don’t! Don’t make her do it! She’s not any good at it, she doesn’t like it!”

Another cup.

“I’ll do it! I’m better at it! Give _me_ the knife, Mother!”

Another cup.

“No, no, no, not my snake Mother, please, pick something else! Why does it have to be _my_ snake!”

Another cup.

“Stop, I’m tired, please, Mother, please, just a little rest, just a little...please…”

“You can rest soon,” Opal says. The Locket gets scooped up with the last cupful, but won’t come out until Cyllene drinks, sobbing. The Locket clatters against her teeth with the last drop of poison, and falls to the island floor. Raven crouches to pick it up, not looking away from the water, as Opal wraps her arms around Cyllene.

“Sh, sh, it’s over, you did it.”

“Mother? Mother I’m so thirsty…”

Opal tries to summon water into the cup with Aguamenti, but nothing happens. She curses under her breath, and says aloud, “You can have a drink when we get out of here. But you have to fly, now. You have to fly, and then you can have a drink.”

“I...I can’t fly, I’m so thirsty, please…”

“Fuck,” Opal says. _Bet you anything the only way to drink is from the lake, and that wakes the Infiri,_ she says silently to Raven.

_Sucker’s bet,_ Raven says. _Do you think destroying the Locket wakes them too? I want to get this over with, but…_

_How about...you get ready to stab, and I get her some water, wands out ready to cast fire?_ Raven nods, and crouches down next to her sisters again, setting the Locket on the rocks and pulling out her obsidian dagger. Opal levitates the wooden cup over the water so she doesn’t have to get near it. _On three…_

Over on the distant path at the edge of the lake, the Aurors (who, thankfully for Cyllene’s ego, did not hear any of her flashbacks) hear an anguished scream, then see a large ball of fire flare across the surface of the water. The fire continues for a minute after the scream stops. A few minutes after that two eagle-owls and a raven fly back from the island.

“Right, Locket’s slagged,” Raven says, turning human and dusting off her hands. Opal turns human too, and Cyllene promptly lands on her shoulder, remaining in bird form.

“Let’s report back to Auror Diggory, then,” the lead Auror says, and smiles at the raven beaking at Opal’s hair. “And then you can all cheer on your younger sister at the Tournament, yeah?”

Cyllene croaks approvingly.

~

Though her younger siblings have to go off to exams, more and more of Nadine’s older half-siblings arrive as the day goes on, and she sees them while showing Maureen around Hogwarts.

Mara comes back from talking with the Headmaster to spend the day with Cedric and Amos. Appoline and Zora are also spending the day with their Champion offspring, though this time Appoline’s husband has stayed home, and Zora’s is not too busy with vampires to come. Mr. Krum has his son Viktor’s nose, and a tough high-collared jacket over his robes that reminds Nadine of the jackets April and Izzy wore in the mirror.

Echo is chatting with Hagrid about gardening, between his administration of end-of-year Care of Magical Creatures exams. May is escorting her Oxford professor wife Jeanie around the castle to chat with the teachers (also between exams) about the similarities and differences in teaching at Muggle and magical academic institutions. Wendy and her mother Kay are with the other Weasleys, but assure Nadine they’ll be rooting for her over Harry (earning an automatic scandalized look and then a sigh from Molly). Uncle Gregory is with the Weasleys too, wearing the same Visitor’s Pass as Jeanie and Maureen.

Harmony drifts over to their table at lunch. She always rotates through each house’s table, her rainbow-trimmed robes standing out. Today is _not_ the day she eats with Slytherin, so instead of sitting down she plants her hands on the table and leans forward until her nose brushes Nadine’s.

“You okay there, Starchild?” Nadine asks. Harmony’s a fifth year, and while OWLs are shorter than NEWTs, Nadine remembers how exhausting they were.

“Mm,” Harmony says, swaying slightly. “Immaterial. What is material; the snake is still only a snake.”

“Pardon?”

“Ah, you didn't puzzle it out.” Harmony nods. “I thought so, you’re quite busy, Xanthia hadn’t either, but I’ve told her.” Nadine looks over at the Ravenclaw table, where Xanthia’s studying her Charms notes. “And now I’ll tell you. _She’s still only a snake._ All she needs is a friend who needs her. Not a master, a friend. You understand?”

“Be nice to snakes,” Nadine says, nodding. “Make friends with them, and they can avoid...becoming something that isn’t a snake?”

“Something that isn’t _just_ a snake,” Harmony says, nodding. Then she drifts over to the Gryffindor table and proceeds to inhale a massive lunch. OWLs, they’re exhausting.

“I’m honestly interested in meeting Bonnie Starchild in person, someday,” Maureen says, having watched this exchange. “I corresponded with her once, you know. She commissioned art for some environmental awareness pamphlets. Nice job.”

Cyllene, Opal, and Raven all get back with Cyllene’s Auror escorts in mid-afternoon, dripping saltwater and reassuring everyone in the know that Riddle’s Locket horcrux has been destroyed. Syrinx’s exams end in time for him to spend an hour before dinner learning flight tips from Cyllene. Okay, they fly for fifteen minutes at the end of the hour (well within sight of the Aurors) after Syrinx spends forty-five minutes as a small adolescent crow hopping sideways at Cyllene, an extremely large, fully grown raven, as she sits ominously on the fence around Hagrid’s garden. And it’s not so much “learning tips from Cyllene” as “teaching himself very quickly how to not get caught after stealing one of her tail feathers.”

Nadine will readily admit, it’s pretty damn funny to watch.

After dinner, Tommy runs up, hugs Nadine, and then says in a rush, “I’m really sorry, I got detention! Someone set off fireworks during our exam and it _wasn’t me_ but one of the ones that didn't go off landed in my bag so Professor Moody didn’t believe me and I’ve got to do inventory of classroom supplies but I _promise_ I’ll go as fast as I can and come cheer for you!” He hugs their mum too and runs off. A Hufflepuff prefect pats Nadine’s shoulder and distractedly says, “I’ll just go make sure he gets to the Professor without any accidents, shall I?” and hurries off too.

“I don’t like that those are still happening,” Maureen says tightly. “If he weren’t so insistent on finishing up the year with his friends…”

“I know, Mum, I don’t like it either,” Nadine says. “They really do all seem to be accidents, though. Come on, let's find you a seat before it gets crowded.”

~

Xanthia turns herself invisible in the shadows of the Quidditch pitch’s viewing stands, and slips through the crowd to stand with Nadine at the entrance to the Maze. She squeezes her sister’s hand, and Nadine squeezes back, expecting her. Then they wait for Ludo Bagman to finish all the instructions, and blow the whistle.

Nadine Argent heads into the Maze first, the Triwizard Champion with the most points, and Xanthia Maplethorpe follows as silently as her shadow.

Fifty yards in, after hearing the whistle blow to let in the next Champions and turning a corner, they face the first monster. A boggart. It comes staggering out of a hedge, shaped like Tommy with his neck broken and blood dripping from his nose. Xanthia nearly screams, but Nadine just raises her wand and says, “Riddik—”

The boggart changes. Tommy clicks his neck back into place, laughing. It sounds...wrong. Cold. It’s not Tommy’s laugh.

“It’s going to be tiresome, growing up again,” Tommy says with a slow, creepy smile, and it’s not his voice either, not the cracking, awkward tones of a fourteen-year-old. It’s an adult’s voice, familiar, yet Xanthia can’t place it. “But better than being a piece of jewelry!” He laughs again, walking slowly towards them. “I should have known _this_ body would be easier to possess than Quirrell’s.”

“Dad,” Nadine whispers. Xanthia claps a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. Nadine takes a deep breath and yells, “Riddikulus!”

Tommy gasps, suddenly covered in paint, like somebody just dumped five different buckets over him. Nadine laughs, and the boggart poofs into dust.

“Blugh,” Nadine says, wiping sweat from her brow. “That was awful—”

“Stupefy!”

Nadine crumples to the ground, struck by the red jet of light. Xanthia looks around wildly, hands still over her mouth. She can’t see anyone, but that doesn’t mean anything, not with invisibility cloaks, the Disillusionment Charm, or even other people with her own natural talent for it.

“Hm,” the spellcaster's voice says, much more quietly and much closer. “Get Nadine Argent through the Tournament alive.” That’s...that’s Professor Moody’s voice, but it sounds like he’s imitating someone posh. There’s a woosh through the air, and then a burst of red sparks erupts over the top of the Maze. “Done. Next, get Potter to the Cup.”

Footsteps begin walking away, Moody’s distinctive gait. Xanthia stares down at her unconscious sister. Someone put Harry’s name in the Goblet. Nadine can’t defend herself. Harry never even _wanted_ to compete. The red sparks signal the refereeing professors to come rescue you.

Xanthia creeps after Moody.

~

“This is a rubbish spot,” Amy says glumly. “I can’t see at all.”

“There’s not much to see, the hedges are too tall,” Vonnie says.

“Maybe another spot will be better!” Crystal says, standing up. Students and visitors to the school grumble as the three third years shuffle through the stands.

“I mean, you can _kind_ of see?” Amy says, as they try to find a better spot. “But then there’s overhangs and arches where you can’t.”

“Hey, there’s Tabitha!” Vonnie says, pointing to the second year witch, who’s sitting by one of the exits. “Aw, she’s alone, Syrinx isn’t with her! We should keep her company.”

Amy and Crystal follow Vonnie over to Tabitha, who smiles when she sees them. “Hi! Can you see any better than I can? Cedric Diggory fought a blast-ended skrewt, but I could only really make out the bangs.”

“No, this Task is rubbish,” Amy says.

“Better than the lake,” Crystal says. “But not as cool as the dragons! Those were awesome.”

“How come you’re alone, Tabitha?” Vonnie asks, in a coaxing, warm voice. “Did you and Syrinx have a fight?”

“What? No, he’s just got detention.” Tabitha heaves a big sigh. “Someone set off fireworks during his Defense Against the Dark Arts exam. It wasn’t _him,_ but an unlit one fell in his bag so Professor Moody gave him detention for the fireworks _and_ for lying about it! It’s so not fair, but I promised to tell him about the Task after. I guess maybe it’s nice that it's so dull, so he’s not missing much— Vonnie? What’s the matter?”

“That exact same thing happened in _our_ Defense Against the Dark Arts exam,” Vonnie says. “And it was Tommy who got detention.”

Crystal and Amy gasp, jumping to their feet. “A frame up!” Crystal says.

“To get them alone while all the teachers are out of the castle!” Amy says.

Tabitha’s eyes go wide, and then she’s a blur of fur streaking towards the exit. Amy, Crystal, and Vonnie follow, running down from the stands (even though running is a very dangerous thing to do on stairs!) and then up towards the castle.

“But— but was it— another student?” Vonnie gasps out as they run.

“Or a teacher?” Crystal says. Those were the two categories they’d narrowed the Mystery Saboteur down to. Someone in the castle, older enough than them all to be good at complex magic.

“And how did they get past Professor Moody?” Amy asks. He’s an ex-Auror! And he came to teach at Hogwarts as a favor to Professor Dumbledore! Sure, he’d first made sure all the students with suspected or confirmed Death Eater families like Draco Malfoy, Syrinx Selwyn, and Theodore Nott knew that he was “keeping an eye on them.” And once the whole “children of Voldemort” thing came to light he started staring at all of _them_ intently in class too...but he wouldn’t let someone _really_ hurt a _student!_

Tabitha reaches the classroom first, where the boys were ordered to do inventory. The Girl Detectives skid to a stop behind her, where she stands growling, her tail puffed up in a bottle-brush.

The door to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom has been blown completely off its hinges.


	18. Isn’t It Messed Up How I’m Just Dying To Be Him?

Xanthia is lying on the ground in a graveyard with a large, clearly venomous snake circling her. It is not an ideal situation, and she is not happy about it.

She had followed Moody through the Maze, confused and alarmed. She witnessed him cast the Imperius Curse on Viktor Krum, and then she stupefied Krum when Moody’s footsteps turned a corner, and sent up red sparks. Moody had killed and knocked out monsters and disarmed traps, often muttering to himself about this being an overly complex plan, “but it will all be worth it when he sees how hard I worked, how loyal I am.”

Near the center, when Fleur and Diggory were one turn away from the Trophy Cup’s clearing, Xanthia heard Moody say, “Both of them here? Karkaroff's lad should've taken care of this. Damn.” Then Moody stupefied Fleur like he had Nadine, and Imperius’d Cedric into walking into the clearing instead of checking on Fleur.

A giant spider had appeared from a shadowy corner and raced towards Cedric.

“Ah, that’s what it is,” Moody muttered. He used the Killing Curse on the giant spider, just like he’d done in their very first day of class on normal ones. Then he’d stunned Cedric and dragged him back out of the clearing.

Harry Potter had appeared just a moment later, before Xanthia could figure out how to distract Moody and send up red sparks (she knew she was good at magic, but he was an _ex-Auror)._ Harry ran across the clearing, likely eager to end the damn Tournament, and grabbed the Cup just as Xanthia grabbed his arm. They’d both been transported by Portkey to this graveyard, and then a man Xanthia barely recognized from the papers as Peter Pettigrew hit Harry with some kind of wordless stunning spell, and Xanthia was close enough to be hit too.

_Should’ve just bloody shouted “It’s a trap!”_ Xanthia thinks, as the snake circles closer and closer, tasting the air, smelling her but not seeing her. _But no, I had to be a great bloody numbskull and grab him._ _Stupid, stupid, stupid._

So now she can’t do anything while Pettigrew completes some horrible potion or ritual or whatever that involves tying Harry to a headstone and taking his blood. Can’t do anything except wait for the Stunner to wear off.

Which it...seems to be doing...starting with her head…

“Excuse me,” Xanthia says to the snake in parseltongue. “Could you please not tell anyone I’m here? And could you please help me?”

The snake slithers over so its head is resting right by Xanthia’s, now that it’s heard her voice. _I can only help one person at a time, and my master needs me._

“For what?”

_For the potion which sustains his current form._ The snake yawns, showing off long fangs. _I am Nagini, and my venom is very, very important._

“I am sure that it is, and your fangs are lovely,” Xanthia says. She thinks of what Harmony told her of Wendy’s prophecy, and what Sirius had said about horcrux users trying to create new bodies. “But what if he gets a new form that does not need your venom for a potion to sustain it? If he does, will you help me instead? I would like to be friends.”

Nagini slithers away. She’s gone for what feels like an eternity, and Xanthia is very, very afraid. Xanthia is also slowly getting more control of her body, and starts wiggling all her fingers and toes, though the limbs they are attached to are sluggish.

_What do you need my help with?_ Nagini asks upon returning. Xanthia had heard a splash while she was gone.

“I need that boy over there to know I’m here, but not either of the adults,” Xanthia says. “Please tell him I can Apparate. If he finds me and touches me, I can get us back to our school.” She can’t stand, yet, but she knows she can Apparate.

_Very well,_ Nagini says.

~

Let us rewind.

Let us leave the graveyard and visit the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, which has assorted cubbies full of supplies to be inventoried.

It also currently has a fifteen year old boy who would be annoyed to learn his sisters still think of him as fourteen even though he _just_ had his birthday three days ago, and a thirteen year old boy who doesn’t expect anyone to remember his birthdays. They are in third and second year respectively, and complaining about the unfairness of having detention when they didn’t even _do_ anything. They are, however, complaining very _quietly,_ as Professor Moody is grading papers in his office with the door open. He hadn’t even looked up from grading when they arrived, had written the instructions on how to do inventory on the chalkboard ahead of time.

“I mean, what are the odds?” Syrinx whispers. “Some jerk setting of fireworks in two different exams?”

“Maybe they set it up in more than two,” Tommy says. “And after the second one Moody found the source and fixed it.”

“Wish whoever really did it had got detention instead of us.”

“At least it’s a set task, not a timed thing. Come on, let’s hurry, I want to get down to the pitch!”

The boys have not, in fact, completed their detention when Professor Moody walks in the classroom door and closes it behind him.

“Sir?” Tommy says, glancing back towards the office, as Syrinx freezes.

“Good work, isn’t?” Moody says. He waves his hand, and the version of himself in the office winks out of existence. “Opposite of the Disillusionment Charm, very handy for keeping troublemaking students in line when you have to step out.”

“Oh, I suppose it is,” Tommy says. Syrinx grabs the back of his robes and hisses in his ear, in parseltongue, “Something’s wrong!”

“Not polite to talk in a language not everyone present understands, Selwyn,” Moody says, walking towards them. “The Dark Lord teach your mother how to do that? Or did she pass it to you a little more...naturally?”

_The Dark Lord,_ Tommy notices Moody say. _Not You-Know-Who or Riddle. That’s not a good sign._

“Why’s he closed the door?” Syrinx hisses. “We have to get out of here!”

But Moody is between them and the door, and this classroom is on too high a floor to jump out the window. Though not for Syrinx, if Tommy can get a window open for him. And then Syrinx could go for help!

Help...getting out of their detention. Because they got weirded out by the professor to assign the detention closing the door. Crud, nobody’s bothering rescuing them from that. Tommy starts backing towards the windows anyway. He may be the baby of his family, but he’s the older student here right now, he needs to look out for Syrinx.

“Don’t want to answer the question, Selwyn?” Moody says. His glass eye isn’t whizzing around like usual. It’s staring straight on at both of them.

“He doesn’t like talking about his mum, sir,” Tommy says firmly. “We’ve gotten through a lot of the inventory, may we—”

“I’m not asking him about his mother,” Moody says.

“You _just_ asked if his mum’s old boss taught her Parseltongue,” Tommy says. Syrinx is still clinging to his robes. “And I don’t think that’s an appropriate question to ask a student during detention. May we be excused now, sir?”

“Old...boss.” Moody suddenly looks furious. _“Old. Boss.”_ He draws his wand; Tommy pulls his own unthinkingly, recognizing the motion from dozens of spats with other students. Oh, crud, he just pulled his wand on a teacher, there’s no way they’re getting out of detention now. But why did Moody—

_“Imperius!”_

Tommy drops his wand and reaches behind himself, grabbing Syrinx’s wrist and turning as the younger boy yelps. He feels dreamy, distant. A detached part of his mind notes that he’s now holding onto both of Syrinx’s wrists very tightly, staring blankly at his frightened expression, and that if Syrinx were to turn into a crow right now he’d likely just wind up with his talons or wings being broken in Tommy’s grasp.

“The two of you,” Moody says, in a very dangerous voice. “Were given a _gift._ Maplethorpe rejected it. Selwyn won’t acknowledge it. And I’ve had to stand at the front of this classroom watching the two of you disrespect the Dark Lord all year.”

“Maplethorpe, snap out of it!” Syrinx hisses desperately, struggling. “Come on, let go! Snap out of it!”

“Do you know what he said when he learned you were at Hogwarts, _Maplethorpe?”_ Moody sneers Tommy’s name the same way Malfoy sneers out _Mudblood._ “He ordered me to make sure no harm befalls you. And I was happy to obey my master, to please him, to ensure your safety. I thought you the child of another loyalist. Everyone knew your father was missing, after all. Surely, you must have been the son of a Death Eater who perished in my master’s service.”

_This is very, very bad,_ Tommy thinks distantly.

“Everyone knew my master had no children,” Moody says. He’s starting to sound dreamy now too. “He has no need for them, having ascended beyond death. He has no need for them, having so many loyal Death Eaters to carry out his work. He has no need for them, having _me._ Better than a son. Closer. Bound by our work, by our loyalty, by our dedication to the Dark Order we are bringing to the world.”

“Wh-who are you?” Syrinx asks in English. He’s balanced on one foot, the other planted on Tommy’s chest, straining to get out of his grip.

Moody draws himself to his full height. “I am the Dark Lord Voldemort’s most loyal follower, Barty Crouch.” His lip curls back in disgust. “Named for my useless father, as the Dark Lord was named for his. And yet you, Maplethorpe, he gifts a name he crafted himself. Thomas Argent. And you _reject_ it. Reject him. You are no son to him, and I won’t let you _disappoint_ him as our fathers disappointed _us.”_

Crouch raises his wand again. “Now. Before he returns.”

_Fuck,_ Tommy thinks. _Detention really IS a death sentence._

“Wait!” Syrinx yells. “He’s just confused! He’s not rejecting your master, I promise!”

“...what,” Crouch says flatly.

“He was raised Muggle, right, him and his sisters? Until they got their letters? He doesn’t _know_ the Dark Lord, got fed all those lies by Professor Dumbledore about him.” Syrinx smiles nervously at Crouch, and puts his foot back on the floor. Tommy manages to uncurl two fingers with Crouch distracted. “Why don’t you...tell us more? I mean...my mother was a Death Eater, and so were my grandparents, and the Selwyns aren’t fools.” He keeps smiling. “Tell us about your work?”

Crouch stares. Then he narrows his eyes, wand pointing at Syrinx instead of Tommy. The Imperius lightens; Tommy feels less dreamy, less distant, and like he could move if he chose to, but that the curse could slam back around him at any moment. He needs to be _careful,_ something he’s never been good at.

“You’re worse,” Crouch says. “Maplethorpe’s a fool, but he’s taken a stand. You, Selwyn, are a _coward._ You won’t acknowledge your father, and you’d disavow Ianthe too, given the chance.”

“Am I a coward?” Syrinx asks, staring back at Crouch. Tommy loosens his grip without letting go, so his hands are just circling Syrinx’s wrists, _pretending_ to hold on. “Or am I clever? Biding my time, staying out of view, so I’m ready to do what needs doing? Am I disavowing my mother, or following her last wishes for me, her _orders?”_

“You…” Crouch lowers his wand.

Syrinx immediately turns into a crow and flies straight at Crouch’s face. Tommy shoves past Crouch and throws himself at the door. He only meant to slam it open, but it smashes onto the floor, wrenched from its hinges. Tommy scrambles up yelling, “Run!”

~

Xanthia has managed to push herself upright, sitting invisibly on the cold grass, when her newly resurrected father strokes his fingers along Peter Pettigrew’s forearm, and suddenly dozens of people in long dark robes and face concealing masks start Apparating into the graveyard.

_Shit._

~

“We went the wrong way!” Tommy yells, as he and Syrinx careen around a corner, dodging hexes. The younger boy is human again, not actually able to fly _indoors_ very well. They’ve managed to get completely turned around, heading deeper into the castle instead of towards any exits. They haven’t even passed any windows!

“We need to hide!” Syrinx yells back. “Hide until he calms down!”

“I don’t think he’s going to calm down!” Tommy sees a familiar painting. “But hiding’s good! Think of hiding and walk back and forth three times!”

_“What?!”_

But Syrinx does what Tommy says, as Tommy does it too, and a door appears on the blank stretch of hallway as Crouch skids around the corner and barrels towards them, throwing hexes that aren’t the Killing Curse itself but are very likely to be extremely unpleasant.

Tommy yanks Syrinx into the Room of Hidden Things.

~

“Nobody’s here,” Amy says, as she, Vonnie, and Crystal poke around the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and office for clues. Tabitha is sniffing the fallen door. “But I found a wand.”

“The boys and whoever framed them must’ve left,” Vonnie says.

“Explosively,” Crystal says with her hands on her hips, nodding towards the door.

“I’ve got their scent,” Tabitha says, briefly human. “Syrinx and Tommy and Professor Moody.”

“What about the Mystery Saboteur?” Amy asks.

Crystal gasps. “Moody framed them himself!” Crystal says.

“But…” Vonnie bites her lip. “But he’s been teaching us to protect ourselves, why would he want to hurt them?”

“Don’t know,” Tabitha says sharply. “Don’t care. Come on.” She shifts back into cat form and trots off, sniffing.

“Second years,” Amy says, shaking her head as they follow, pocketing the wand she found. “Short tempers!”

“We were second years last year,” Vonnie points out.

“And we had short tempers.”

“I thought that was just from being miserable from the dementors all year,” Crystal says. Tabitha starts moving faster, and the three junior detectives jog to keep up.

“No,” Amy says. “It’s definitely a second years thing.”


	19. And Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down Swingin’

Back during the reunion, Maureen Maplethorpe and Kay Weasley had gotten to talking, and found they had a lot in common. Being single mothers of five in small villages. Being considered eccentric by the neighbors. Fighting Hogwarts over reasonable accommodations for their eldest daughters (“You’d think they’d never heard of anxiety disorders before!” “Braille quills are no problem, but as soon as you ask a professor to read their chalkboard instructions aloud it’s all ‘that would disrupt the lecture flow’, well they can shove their ‘lecture flow’ up their—”).

There were differences too, helping continue the conversation as they could ask each other loads of questions along with commiserating. Maureen was married for eleven years before her husband vanished, even if Thomas  _ was _ absent more often than not, and Kay had been single the whole way through. Kay had adopted four of her children at different ages (some of them her own distant cousins, all of them orphaned by the war) while Maureen had dealt with pregnancy and childbirth five times. Maureen didn’t have much other family, Kay was the second youngest of five kids herself and had the extended family to match. The Maplethorpes lived inside their village, the Weasleys a twenty minute brisk walk outside theirs. Maureen’s children attended a local primary school and then Hogwarts, while Kay homeschooled hers.

“Wendy wanted to go to Hogwarts,” Kay said. “Because her Uncle Arthur and Aunt Molly did, and she just adores them. Her older brother wanted to stay home, and the younger ones all followed his lead.”

“I can’t imagine homeschooling all of mine,” Maureen said. “Let alone in magic, too.” Then she smiled and touched Kay’s arm. “You must be quite talented.” Kay had blushed, which on a Weasley is a spectacularly clashing sight.

At the start of the final Task, Kay and Wendy peel off from the other Weasleys to sit near the top of the stands with the Maplethorpes. Queenie and Pip narrate what little they can see in the Maze to Wendy, who’s got a tin can with a hole punched in the bottom and a string running through it dangling around her neck for some reason. Kay tells Maureen about magical accidents all her kids have gone through and how easy it was to patch them up, to reassure her that Nadine is going to be fine.

When the red sparks go up and Nadine is brought out unconscious by McGonagall, the two mothers head down and the three grown offspring stay up.

“Goodness, what’s Starchild doing?” Pip says, seeing the blue-haired fifth year Unsorted student jogging around the perimeter of the Maze with a strange device. Queenie lifts up her binoculars again.

(Sheila is back home by the way, enjoying the magically warmed living-room sized terrarium Raven and Opal built for her in Pip and Queenie’s flat).

“Her NEWT-level Defense Against the Dark Arts project,” Wendy explains.

Queenie sees through the binoculars that Harmony Starchild also has a tin can draped around her neck, and that the string vanishes into the bib-pocket of her sky-blue overalls, much like Wendy’s vanishes into the front kangaroo pocket of her Weasley jumper. Class and exams being over for the day, Harmony has changed out of her robes and into her usual weekend wear, the  _ height _ of nineties fashion: sky-blue overalls with butterfly patches ironed on, a long-sleeved rainbow shirt, a rainbow headband, cute socks, and purple jelly sandals.

“But she’s only just finished OWLs, hasn’t she?” Pip asks. They and Queenie had graduated the June before Harmony started at Hogwarts, only ever meeting at the reunion before today.

“Has she duct-taped pie tins, omnioculars, and a scroll to an old Quidditch broom?” Queens asks. The overall effect makes it rather look like Harmony’s carrying a Muggle metal-detector. She vanishes out of sight around the corner of the Maze opposite the pitch’s main entrance.

“Yeah,” Wendy says. “You got it exactly. And she started this project her second year, when the Headmaster sat her down to discuss her third year electives, and she asked about all the long term requirements of OWLs and NEWTs. I’ve helped out before a couple times.” Wendy reaches into the same pocket the string leads to, in which she stored her cane after folding it up when they all sat down, and pulls out a plastic frisbee. “If her calculations are correct, we’ll be able to use this thing tonight.”

“What calculations?” Pip asks. Queenie’s not listening anymore, peering down at Maureen and Kay comforting an Enervate’d Nadine about losing the Tournament. Absolutely none of them have any idea that it wasn’t a fellow competitor who knocked her out.

A little bit later, when Barty Crouch Jr. has stomped off the the castle, Disillusionment Charm wearing off, and the Girl Detectives plus Tabitha have run up there too, Harmony Starchild will come jogging around the Maze with her device, back to where she started, and carefully examine the read-out on the scroll.

Then she goes running up to the castle too.

~

Lord Voldemort is torturing his returned followers, punishing them for neither seeking him out like Petigrew did nor facing Azkaban. He is monologuing about what he went through without a body, what he had to do to get back, and how they’re going to take over the world.

Xanthia is not listening to it. She is walking slowly over to the headstone Harry’s tied to, supported by Nagini. The huge snake has reared up to allow Xanthia, still invisible, to lean on her. It probably looks a bit odd, Nagini reared up and scooting along, but Voldemort’s followers have long learned not to ask loud questions about weird things snakes do around him, and are also a bit distracted behind Crucio’d.

“And now,” Voldemort says, gesturing to where Harry is tied up. “We duel—”

With the typical loud  _ crack _ of Disapparition Harry and Nagini vanish right in front of Voldemort’s eyes.

~

“Come out,” Crouch calls between hexes, stalking through the Room of Hidden Things. “And this will be  _ quick.” _

“How stupid does he think we are?” Syrinx hisses to Tommy. It’s possible to speak very,  _ very _ quietly in Parseltongue and be heard, as long as you’re speaking to another parselmouth or a snake.

“This way, come on,” Tommy hisses back. He knows where the Room of Requirement is in relation to the rest of the castle. They just need to lead Crouch deep enough into the maze of haphazardly piled detritus of centuries of student’s contraband that they can circle around and get out again. Then they can run for the entry hall, and from there the Quidditch pitch.

“You don’t want it to be slow, boys!” Crouch yells. “You don’t want to go like the Longbottoms did!”

“Wait,” Syrinx hisses, as they’re about to duck under two fallen bookshelves leaning against each other to form a short tunnel. “Look!” He points, and Tommy has to clap a hand over his mouth to keep in a gasp.

That’s the Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw!

Tommy knew what it looked like long before they learned of horcruxes, having listened to Xanthia going on about it after she got Sorted. Then during the investigation these last few months, Mara Diggory had kept all the half-sibs and their children appraised of the suspected vessels; Sirius posits that they’re in more danger of possession by them than an unrelated person, and they all know what Ginny Weasley went through.

“We have to get that to one of the grown-ups,” Tommy says, changing course to reach the Diadem. Neither he nor Syrinx have any of the obsidian daggers. Opal and Raven insisted on only giving them to “responsible adults”. The Diadem is sitting on top of a tall tower of books. “And we can’t touch it directly.”

“Here.” Syrinx pulls his uniform hat from his pocket (very crumpled) and hands it over to Tommy, who’s much taller and has a better reach. Tommy scoops the Diadem into the hat. Unfortunately, the motion draws Crouch’s magical glass eye (stolen from the real Moody).

“Got you!”

“Run!” Tommy yells for the second time tonight.

Fortunately for both boys and the entire wizarding world, they  _ had _ lured Crouch deep enough into the Room of Hidden Things by now to circle around him to the door and book it out of there.

They scoop up Amy, Crystal, Vonnie, and Tabitha along the way, screaming their heads off in panic as Crouch (now covered in goop, feathers, and ripped paper from barreling through centuries of degraded pranks and student projects in his murderous rage) gives chase.

Harmony Starchild, having finished scanning the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom with her device, hears the lower years screaming and the teacher throwing hexes, and follows them all back down to the pitch.

She now also has Alastor Moody’s multi-compartment trunk lightened to the weight of a feather and clipped to a belt-loop of her overalls.

~

Xanthia, Harry, and Nagini can’t actually Apparate into Hogwarts, but Xanthia manages to land them right outside the gates. She stumbles, and Harry catches her. She’s visible again; her invisibility held up through the Portkey, but not with the concentration it takes her to perform a double Side-Along Apparition.

“Still a bit Stupefied,” Xanthia says. “Can’t run. Here—” She casts the Sonorous Charm on Harry. “We’ll catch up, you warn everyone! That Cup being a Portkey—”

Harry nods, squeezes her shoulder, and runs through the gates. He starts shouting, hollering in his amplified voice that Voldemort is both back from the dead and likely headed here. Xanthia leans on Nagini again, and they follow as fast as they can. Xanthia slowly turns herself invisible again along the way.

_ Dramatic, noisy children, _ Nagini grumbles.

“You like drama,” Xanthia says, because she can’t imagine any snake that  _ didn’t _ enjoy theatrics spending much time with Lord Voldemort. Nagini grumbles more but doesn’t deny it.

Unfortunately Voldemort (her dad, shit, it’s been over half a year since everyone found out and it’s  _ still _ hard to wrap her head around) had pieced together that without the Portkey Harry would not have been able to return  _ directly _ to Hogwarts. Which meant he and the Death Eaters could enact their surprise attack (for why else this elaborate plot, instead of just kidnapping Harry for his blood?) in their few minutes extra time.

Xanthia arrives to find the Quidditch pitch in chaos. Death Eaters are throwing Stunners everywhere  _ (Of course, _ Xanthia thinks.  _ Why kill when you can capture? This is a hostage collecting attack, not a slaughter.) _ while being countered by the Aurors to accompany Cyllene. The professors are protecting the exits to evacuate students. Beauxbatons Headmistress Madame Maxine is stomping through the hedges, wand out, followed by Appoline Delacour and Amos Diggory, calling for their children. Viktor Krum and his parents are guarding their backs.

Auror Mara Diggory is not part of that wedge, because she and Professor Dumbledore are locked in a tense, mostly silent battle with Voldemort.

Halfway between the main entrance to the pitch and the entrance to the Maze, Harry is lying face-up and still as stone on the grass. Nadine’s kneeling next to him, hands over her mouth, expression horrified. Maureen’s next to her, and Kay Weasley’s got a Shield Spell over all four of them.

_ Noisy, _ Nagini grumbles again.  _ Do you need my help leaving, or fighting? _

“I…” Xanthia is standing to one side of the main entrance, leaning on Nagini more for emotional support than physical now, and she has no idea what to do. They probably ought to run, not become hostages or...or worse…

Then a high pitched noise catches her ear. She turns.

A young crow swoops over her head, gets buffeted in the hot summer air teeming with spells, and lands hastily on the safety railing around a viewing box. Lands right next to Wendy Weasley, who’s got a plastic frisbee in one hand, and a tin can pressed to her ear in the other. Pip and Queenie are holding a Shield Spell just like Kay. The crow is not the source of the noise.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

It catches everyone else’s ear too.

_ “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” _

For whatever reason, the sound and then sight of four Hogwarts students (one carrying a cat whose fur is all standing on end) running pell-mell and screaming  _ towards _ the danger of the battle makes everyone freeze. Or perhaps it’s the sight of a person who’s apparently  _ not _ Professor Moody chasing them, falling repeatedly as his wooden leg is ejected by the regrowing flesh leg as what must be Polyjuice Potion wears off. Or perhaps Harmony Starchild jogging after them all with a strange device and a travel trunk.

**_“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”_ **

~

Tommy careens to a stop a few yards into the Quidditch pitch, the chaotic sight meeting his eyes cutting through the sheer terror to inform him that, perhaps, he has not chosen a safe destination after all. His fellow third years don’t manage to stop themselves, and so Vonnie crashes into him, Amy into Vonnie, and Crystal into Amy, with Tabitha yowling unhappily at being squished between the last two girls.

“Um…”

“Professor Moody’s the Mystery Saboteur!” Amy yells, pointing behind them.

Tommy’s third-oldest half-sister and Professor Dumbledore are both poised on top of the Maze hedges as though they’re flat ground, and between them stands a strange man, staring down at Tommy as though mesmerized. The man is tall, bald, and white-skinned, with red eyes and two slits instead of a nose. He’s wearing plain dark robes that look a bit like the Hogwarts school uniform, if you didn’t decorate it at all and maybe dragged it through a bush a few times.

And even without a nose or hair he still looks just enough like the framed pictures Tommy grew up looking at for Tommy to say, “Dad?”

Tom Marvolo Riddle, Voldemort to his enemies, the Dark Lord to his followers, and absolutely nothing at all to his friends (for he has none), smiles.

“Son.”


	20. Am I More Than You Bargained For Yet?

Let it never be said that the student body of Hogwarts does not have just as much love of drama and theatrics as Nagini the giant venomous snake does. The Death Eaters are all frozen, unsure of what to do, as their master had made it plain after summoning them that no harm was to come to the Argent children (those aware of the legal name changes keeping it to themselves (Crucio does not, in fact, make people chatty)). The outnumbered Aurors are moving slowly and carefully into advantageous positions, not drawing attention to themselves. The teachers are still covering the exits, and sharply gesturing for the students to _go through said exits._

The students are instead plastering themselves against the railings of the viewing boxes, and the stairs of the stands, watching and listening with bated breath. This is _way_ more interesting than the final Task had been!

Sucks about Potter being dead, though.

(“He’s not dead, I saw his arm moving!”

“No, he’s totally dead, that was an AK.”

“Yeah, but he lived through one when he was a baby, didn’t he?”)

_“Son?!”_ Cyllene Black yells. Her nose is broken, and she’s got a Death Eater in a headlock. “I’ve been fighting your lackeys in plain sight for five minutes and you didn’t gasp out ‘daughter!’ even though I _know_ you know who I am!”

Voldemort ignores her.

“That’s because you’re a traitor!” the Death Eater she’s got in a headlock says. “You got out of Azkaban a week ago but you didn’t come when he summoned us! You helped the Aurors find his precious artefacts!”

“Artefacts?” Voldemort says in a silky voice, not looking away from Tommy. Cyllene growls and rips the mask off the Death Eater, revealing the face of a high ranking Ministry official, Mr. Avery. Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge, who came to act as a judge for the final Task and has been chewing nervously on his hat, moans in dismay.

(Harmony unclips the trunk from her belt loop as she passes by May, Jeanie, and Echo. “Could you please help the man inside compartment number seven? He’s not feeling well. Thank you.”)

“At least she _went_ to Azkaban,” snarls a man with straw hair that none of the student body but quite a few of the faculty recognize. “As I did. You cowards disavowed our master! You should all—”

“They have been punished, Barty, calm yourself,” Voldemort says.

“Who?” Crystal turns around, and elbows Amy, who elbows Vonnie. “Guys! Professor Moody just turned into this weird blonde dude!”

“I told you a teacher wouldn’t really let a student get hurt,” Vonnie says. Tabitha jumps out of Crystal’s arms and dashes off into the crowd. “I knew it couldn’t really be Professor Moody.”

Crouch laughs, then snarls, “I’ve been teaching you brats all year! You never _knew_ the real Alastor Moody!”

(“Get ready,” Harmony says into her tin can.

“Roger that,” Wendy says, and raises the frisbee, wrist bent. “I need you two to lower the shield now.”)

“Whoever you are,” Amy says. “You’ve lost! You can’t hurt Tommy or Syrinx now, everyone knows you’re the Mystery Saboteur!”

“Can’t...what?” Voldemort asks dangerously.

“Tommy’s been having mysterious accidents since that _Witch Weekly_ article came out,” Amy says, any fear she might have in this situation completely overridden by the junior detective instinct to expound on cases. “And then Syr— Er.” Amy abruptly remembers that Syrinx was not, in fact, open about Voldemort being his father.

“Another one of our half-siblings started having them too, after the reunion,” Vonnie says. “And tonight they both got framed in order to be trapped in detention with the killer!”

_“Witch Weekly_ article?” Voldemort repeats. “Reunion? _Our_ half-siblings?” Okay, so maybe Peter Petrigrew wasn’t keeping up to date on news outside the Daily Prophet, or even news _within_ the Daily Prophet that didn’t seem relevant to their plan. Voldemort flicks his fingers as though dismissing the words he just repeated, and says, “Killer?”

Next to Harry Potter’s (presumed) corpse, Nadine is making a cut-off gesture, hand slashing in front of her throat, but while Tommy notices, the Girl Detectives don’t. Nor does Barty Crouch.

“All the accidents could’ve been fatal,” Crystal explains.

“BECAUSE HE _DOESN’T DESERVE WHAT YOU GAVE HIM!”_ Barty roars. “Both of them rejected you! _All_ of them rejected you! I alone remained loyal, serving you faithfully, and I knew what needed to be done—”

_(“Now!”)_

Voldemort points his wand at his loyal, murderous servant. Wendy throws the frisbee. Voldemort yells the Killing Curse, and the flash of green light is intercepted by the simple plastic disc. There are no counter-curses or wards to fend off the Killing Curse, as we know (aside from what Lily did), but it does seem to need an unimpeded line between wand and target. Or else it could just be slashed in a grid pattern from outside houses, and the series would be much grimmer.

(Also, Harmony Starchild has presumably done lots of complicated spellwork to this frisbee.)

The frisbee falls onto the grass, plastic slightly bubbled, and Harmony jogs over to it as everyone stares, stunned and confused. Well, almost everyone: Amy, Crystal, and Vonnie are tackling Crouch to take away his wand and tie him up with jump-ropes one might find in an American public school gym class.

Harmony runs the pie-tin-encased omnioculars over the frisbee, hums happily at the read-out on the scroll, and says into her tin can, “Got it, Wendy! Perfect shot!”

“Fuck yeah!” Wendy yells from atop the Quidditch stands. Pip and Queenie hastily put their Shield Charm back up.

“Who are you, and what did you just do?” Voldemort asks. Listen, we know, Voldemort should be in full rage mode at one of his murders being stopped, but he is _fascinated_ by magic and Harmony is clearly up to something unprecedented and interesting.

“I’m your daughter Harmony Starchild,” Harmony says. “And I’ve just trapped the Curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts position in this frisbee for my NEWT project.”

“You… _how...”_

“Could I borrow someone’s basilisk-venom dagger, please?” Harmony says, looking around the crowd. “This does need to be destroyed fairly quickly.”

“Here, honey, I’ve got one,” Maureen says, digging in her purse. Yes, she’s freaked out by everything going on, and there’s a dead teen her son’s age at her feet, but some mom habits are too strong to break. She doesn’t actually give her dagger to Harmony though, because Opal delivers one first. There’s a very loud screech as the eagle-owl Animagus swoops low over the pitch, and drops her dagger in Harmony’s extended hand.

“Thank you, Opal,” Harmony says. Opal lands on a safety railing. Harmony unsheathes the dagger and stabs the frisbee. Unlike the horcruxes, it does not scream. It does melt though, the plastic bubbling like boiling water, and then bursts into green flames. When the flames die out, all that’s left is the dagger, and a scorch mark on the grass.

“Mm, green, though it would be purple,” Harmony says, using the Levitation Charm to get the dragonhide sheath back on the faintly sizzling dagger. She makes a note in the scroll attached to her device.

“I worked very hard on that curse,” Tom Riddle says. He sounds like someone just insulted his entry in a local poetry contest. A few yards away from him on the hedge, Albus Dumbledore looks _delighted._

“Yes I know,” Harmony says, standing up and dusting off her hands. “That’s why we needed to catch one of _your_ spells aimed at the current professor.”

“Yeah!” Cyllene yells, pumping her fist in the air. She’s no longer holding Avery in a headlock; one of the Aurors has handcuffed him and dragged him over to the bottom of the stands. Said Auror has also fixed Cyllene’s broken nose. “How do you like that, _Vee?_ All your hard work on that curse overturned by one little girl and her big sister!”

“Cyllene,” Voldemort says, and everyone tenses as he raises his wand-hand, but it’s just to pinch the bridge of what used to be his nose. “I recall you used to mime vomiting at any mention of sisterly teamwork.”

“It’s been almost fourteen years, I’ve _grown.”_ Cyllene shrugs as she says it in a way that draws the eye of everyone not related to her to the low neckline of her black velvet dress. “So’ve all your kids, and you know what we’ve done with that sibling teamwork? Destroyed your horcruxes!”

A hush falls over the Quidditch pitch. It’s followed by a murmur of “What’s a horcrux?” from everyone who doesn’t know, and nauseated sounds from everyone who does.

Voldemort finally turns away from Tommy to turn on one heel and stare at Cyllene. “You’ve done _what.”_

(Unnoticed by everyone but the three women near him, Harry Potter sits up with a groan, rubbing his scar and looking around. “Um, what’s going on? Did I die?”

“Dad killed you,” Nadine whispers. Maureen hears both of them but keeps her attention on her ex-husband.

“How about you just lie back down and keep playing dead, kiddo,” Kay says. Harry thinks that sounds like a great idea and does so.)

Cyllene smirks and ticks horcruxes off on her fingers. “Diary? Gone. Cup? Gone. Ring? Gone. Locket? Gone. We’ve kicked your ass and you didn’t even know it.”

Voldemort has grown tenser and tenser with each tick, but now smiles again. “You think too small, Cyllene. Your mother had the same problem. I did not stop at—”

“Diadem.”

Voldemort turns slowly. Tommy shifts the hat so that the famed Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw is visible, glinting in the big lights illuminating the Quidditch pitch, only remaining covered where he grips it.

“Thomas,” Voldemort says, extending his hand from atop the hedge. “Bring me that.”

“Harmony,” Tommy says. “Can I borrow—”

Voldemort immediately accio’s the obsidian dagger to himself and pockets it. He tries to accio the horcrux as well, but it doesn’t budge. “Thomas, this is very serious. I need that. Bring it here.” 

Maureen snarls from inside the Shield Charm bubble. “Need? _Need?_ Your _children_ needed you, but you were too busy running around playing war to be there for them!”

“I provided for—”

“After you vanished, Queenie had _nightmares_ of finding you dead in a ditch!” Maureen yells. “That first year, none of us could leave the house for more than an hour or she’d panic that we weren’t coming back!”

“I was _dead,”_ Riddle snarls. “Forgive me for not returning when I had no _body.”_

“And whose fault is that!”

Maureen snaps the obsidian dagger out of her purse and its sheath, pointing it angrily up at him. He tries to accio that one as well, but like the horcrux, it doesn’t budge, Maureen’s grip too strong, and nearly every magic user in the pitch casting a counter-charm to the summons. “You started a war! You murdered people for just how they were born! For being like me! For being like our children! You would never have died and left them if you’d just! Bloody! Not! Killed people!”

Tommy has been attempting to sidle towards his mum during this rant. Unfortunately, the Aurors have not been able to get all the Death Eaters (what with being outnumbered and needing to be stealthy), and one of them casts the Leg-Locker Curse. He’s stuck, though thankfully doesn’t fall over.

“You are going to call off this...this...this whatever it is!” Maureen says. “You are going to order all your friends here to stand down and turn themselves over to the authorities, and you’re going to as well.”

“I think not,” Voldemort says icily. He turns away from here like she doesn’t matter. “My son, I apologize for my absence. I never meant to leave you for so long. But I am here, now, and with what you hold in your hand I will _always_ be here.”

“That’s…that’s not a good thing,” Tommy says shakily. “You hurt people. You...you killed Harry’s parents, and…” He looks at the body sprawled on the ground next to Nadine, and gulps. “And him.”

“It was necessary.”

“No, no it’s not!”

“You are...young,” Voldemort says. “You will understand in time. There is much for you to learn, Thomas. Much for me to teach you.”

“Boo!” Cyllene yells. “You suck at teaching! You’re worse than Mother was!”

_“Silence!”_ Voldemort roars, slashing a Crucio towards her. She screams. Tommy blanches; seeing one’s professor perform the Cruciatus Curse on a spider is very different from seeing it done to a human being.

Mara and Dumbledore immediately throw spells at Voldemort, breaking his concentration. Two other people come to Cyllene’s rescue too: her youngest half-sibs and fellow Animagi. Tabitha has been climbing the hedge, and trips Voldemort off of it as Syrinx pecks at his face.

“Enough!” Voldemort slashes his wand through the air more, staggering to his feet. Mara and Dumbledore are both knocked off the hedge, and then ambushed by Death Eaters who keep them engaged in duels. Tabitha and Syrinx are both forced by a spell back into human form, and Crucio’d.

“Stop it!” Tommy screams. “Stop hurting them!”

Voldemort snaps his wand upright. Tabitha and Syrinx stay collapsed on the ground. “Very well. Bring me the Diadem.”

“Don’t,” Syrinx groans. Tommy can’t anyway, since his legs are cursed, though no one but the caster seems to have noticed. “Tommy, don’t...don’t let him…”

“...is that Ianthe’s child?” Voldemort says curiously. He kicks Syrinx over onto his back. “Fascinating. You look just like her, Syrinx.”

“How’d you know his name?” Tommy asks. Keep him talking. Keep him distracted. Get enough time to wear off the Leg-Locker Curse (ugh, why’d he have to drop his wand when Crouch Imperius’d him?) and get over to Mum, or for her to sneak over to him. Keep the murderous asshole talking so he’s not torturing anyone.

“Ianthe was an expert at divination,” Voldemort says, tilting his head slightly to eye Syrinx, who’s pushing himself up onto his elbows, coughing and glaring. Tabitha is recovering faster, slipping into cat form to be a smaller target. More and more duels between Death Eaters and everyone else are breaking out around them. Maybe keeping Voldemort talking isn’t such a good plan if they all wind up getting hit by stray hexes.

“Very useful when planning attacks,” Voldemort goes on. “She divined that she would have a daughter, and chose the name Syrinx in reference to—”

“I don’t care!” Syrinx yells, and then coughs more, shuddering. Note to self, do not get Crucio’d. “I don’t care why she chose it!”

“You should care,” Voldemort says. “And you should be on my side, as she was. She sacrificed much for—”

“I don’t care why she chose it, because she didn’t choose me!” Syrinx tries to stagger to his feet, and Voldemort kicks him in the chest to knock him back down. Tommy clenches his fists angrily, one of them still around the Diadem. Movement catches his eye. Tabitha is on her paws, crouched, ready to spring. And tip-toeing around Voldemort, guarded by Kay Weasley, is Maureen.

“I don’t care if you’re my father or just her boss!” Syrinx yells. “She chose you over me! I _hate_ you! Everyone else’s parents lied their way out of Azkaban, everyone else’s parents chose _them!”_

“Ah,” Voldemort says. “This _is_ fascinating. First Maureen, now you. I suppose I should have predicted it, with how I used to feel about my own parents.” He looks away from Syrinx to smile at Tommy. “First lesson, Thomas, take note not only of what motivates your followers, but also the people connected to them—”

“That’s not my name,” Tommy says.

The smile vanishes. “No, I suppose not,” Voldemort says. “You, my son, were named for me, and I was Thomas Argent at the time. I always intend to tell you your full, true name—”

“My name isn’t Thomas Argent,” Tommy says. “I’m Tommy Maplethorpe, and _you’re not my dad!”_

He throws the Diadem.

Voldemort lunges, wand raised.

Tabitha and Syrinx tackle Voldemort from behind, Syrinx wrapping arms around his waist and Tabitha leaping onto his head, digging in her claws.

Maureen Maplethorpe, artist, mother, and Muggle, plunges the basilisk-venom obsidian dagger into Tom Riddle’s sole remaining horcrux.


	21. We’re Going Down, Down In An Earlier Round

There is a terrible scream.

There are _two_ terrible screams.

Then there is a third terrible scream right next to Wendy, but instead of wordless anguish, it's Queenie screaming out, "Mum!"

“What’s happened?” Wendy asks. She and her two half-sibs have been inching along the railing towards the stairs since she threw the frisbee, but it’s hard to get through the crowd. Half the students are still spectating, trusting their Shield Charms to protect them from stray hexes as all the Death Eaters focus on the Aurors and faculty, but the other half are trying to flee.

“Mum stabbed Dad’s evil tiara,” Pip explains. Their arm is steady in Wendy’s grip, but their voice shakes. “And it shattered or melted or something, and _splashed._ She’s hurt.”

“If you two need to get down there faster I can catch up to you,” Wendy offers. It’ll suck getting down the stairs on her own with a crowd like this, but if she can grab some fellow Hufflepuffs, it won’t be so bad. She barely remembers any of the war, but her mum fought in it; she knows this fear. “My mum’s pretty good at healing spells. I’m sure Maureen’ll be okay.”

“Queenie, you go,” Pip says. Wendy hears the hum of their joint Shield Charm change tones as Queenie splits off to get through the crowd faster. “Hey, Wendy,” Pip says, still walking the two of them towards the stairs in fits and spurts through the crowd. Their voice is still shaking, but now deliberately light. “Guess what Queenie just did?”

“What?” Wendy asks, willing to play along to keep Pip from screaming like they clearly want to.

“Used a spell she invented our seventh year to get down faster. Oh, we’re at the stairs. Railing on your right.” Wendy grabs it and they start their descent. “Calls it the Sticky Hand charm, like those arcade prizes. She’s gone over the rail to just climb straight down the sides of the stands like a bug.”

“That’s very cool,” Wendy says approvingly. “Warn me when we’re about to hit a landing.”

“Sure thing.”

~

Harmony wonders, as the Diadem flies through the air, why Tommy didn’t just hand it to Maureen. Then the obvious occurs to her, and as the dagger slams down, she casts the counter-spell to the Leg-Locker Curse.

There’s a terrible scream, and Tom Riddle’s face, what’s visible of it past Tabitha’s attack and Riddle’s arms as he tries to wrench her off, is a terrifying mask of fury.

Harmony thinks of all the things she learned about both Tom Riddle and Lord Voldemort when investigating the Curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts position. She calculates that she probably can’t best him in a magical duel, leaves her wand in her pocket, and tackles him at the exact same moment Tommy does.

~

Mara’s not thrilled about the sheer number of children involved in taking down Tom Riddle, alias Lord Voldemort, but she can’t say she objects to the help they’re able to give. Any other day Maureen Maplethorpe would’ve been dead meat for what she’d done, but right now there’s three kids and one cat grappling with Riddle, keeping him from getting any spells off. They’ve given Mara and Albus enough time to defeat the Death Eaters dueling them, and Kay Weasley enough time to heal all of Maureen’s injuries.

There’s a brief moment of worry when Riddle does angry, wandless, rough magic, the sort a child would, that knocks all three children and the cat (wait, shit, that’s Tuft, that’s a child too) off of him. He staggers to his feet, wand raised—

_“Expelliarmus!”_

—the wand promptly flies out of his grip and into the open hand of Harry Potter (oh, he’s not dead after all, that’s good). The two younger Maplethorpe girls are standing on either side of him, Nadine holding him up, and Albus Dumbledore is between them and Riddle. There is also a large snake circling all of them, for some reason, and Mara can hear it _snickering._

Albus looks honest to goodness _disappointed_ in Riddle. “Really, Tom,” he says. “The Cruciatus Curse? On your own daughter? On children?”

“They should have stayed out of the way,” Riddle snarls. He makes a gesture that Mara recognizes as the start of a particularly nasty wandless hex. Unfortunately for him, she’s very good at her job. Mara grabs Riddle’s elbow and slaps a silver cuff courtesy of Melia Greengrass around his wrist. He hadn’t even noticed her sneaking up on him.

(“He stole secrets passed down from Morgana herself!” Greengrass had hissed furiously, when Mara went to talk to her. “You put this on him and you _never take it off!”)_

“Tom Riddle, you are under arrest,” Mara says. “On multiple counts of murder, kidnapping, fraud—”

“I think not,” Riddle sneers, plunging his other hand into the depths of his robes. Then his eyes go wide. “Er…” He pulls his hand out and plunges it into a different shadowy fold. “You will regret— er.”

“I know that sound!” Wendy Weasley says loudly. When had she and the eldest Maplethorpes arrived? She’s crouched down next to Harmony Starchild, checking on the younger girl. “That’s the sound of a total git rummaging in his pockets for something he doesn’t have!”

All around them, the other Aurors and Hogwarts faculty are snapping Greengrass’s prototype magic-suppressing cuffs onto disarmed Death Eaters. Mara gets Riddle’s other wrist behind his back and cuffs it to the first.

“I wonder what he’s looking for,” Xanthia Maplethorpe says. “Maybe it’s this?” She holds up the dagger Riddle stole from Starchild.

“Xanthia’s got the basilisk-venom dagger Opal lent me,” Starchild says dreamily. “How nice. May I have a bruise healing potion, please? I’ve landed on my Jinxometer.”

“I don’t have that but I do have a tylenol,” Gregory Prewett says, appearing with his cousin Molly, her husband Arthur, and most of their children circling him protectively. A large black dog that Mara saw get hit by a Stunner at the beginning of the fight wriggles out of their small crowd and bounds over to Potter. “Unless you have adverse reactions to tylenol,” Gregory says firmly. “In which case I have several other painkillers with me.”

Mara clears her throat and continues. “Arson, larceny, assault, unlicensed potions sales, unlicensed experimental magical creature breeding, ashwinder trafficking—”

“This is not over,” Riddle says, which in Mara’s experience is a sure sign her target has realized they cannot get out of their current predicament. “I cannot be defeated, save by one. There is a prophecy—”

“Oooooooh, a _prophecy,”_ Wendy says mockingly as Mara starts marching Riddle towards the Quidditch pitch’s main exit. She can hear newly licensed Auror Tonks calling for back-up to get all the Death Eaters to Ministry holding cells, and to meet them at the gates of Hogwarts. “Hey Harmony, remind me, what number did we come up with, again? When you ran the calculations on every entry in my prophecy journal?”

May Green is giving healing potions to all the children that tackled Riddle. Her wife Jeanie Byrnes is supporting retired Auror Alastor Moody, and oh boy, Mara can _feel_ the paperwork headache for whatever happened to _him_ coming on.

“Any given prophecy,” Starchild says, as May shines wandlight in her eyes to check for a concussion (Echo is doing the same for Tabitha, who has grudgingly turned human again). “Regardless of intensity of hair-glow, has a fifteen point seven percent chance of coming to fruition as foretold, a twenty-nine point three percent chance of happening but significantly differently from the way it was foretold, and a sixty-two percent chance of not happening at all, or happening so differently as to _functionally_ not happen at all.”

“I’d love to see your sample set,” Gregory says, sounding like he really means it, not the simple adult humoring of children. “Do you realize your percentages add up to one hundred and seven?”

“Prophecies are bendy like that.”

“Look, Diggory’s arrested him,” says the Rosier-Rowle girl, one of those three third-years to solve mysteries, as Mara gets Riddle (now literally digging in his heels) closer to the exit. Auror Tonks is standing by them, not bothering to hold in laughter at the sight of Barty Crouch Jr. tied up in pink and purple sparkly skipping ropes.

McTavish points at Riddle. “You have the right to remain silent! Anything you say can and may be used against you in the court of law!”

“Crystal,” Yates chides. “This isn’t America, that’s not what we say here.”

“Oh, yeah.” McTavish points more emphatically. “You have the right to remain a _butthead!”_

~

The blast of magic that knocked Harmony, Syrinx, Tabitha, and Tommy off of their villain father also knocked Maureen (having _just_ stood back up after being healed by Kay) off her feet. Fortunately Kay was still right there and caught her. They now form a charming tableaux, Kay on her knees with Maureen cradled in her arms, gazing into each other’s faces (after having looked around urgently to make sure their children were alright), and one of Maureen’s hands resting on Kay’s bicep.

“You saved my life from that blast,” Maureen says.

“Er, I, well I caught you,” Kay says, blushing slightly and stammering. “But I was already here so I can’t take credit—”

“You caught me because you saved my life from that exploding Diadem,” Maureen says, and moves her hand from Kay’s bicep to cup her cheek. “You’re my hero.”

Kay blushes even harder, face crimson. “I mean, that was horrible but not life threatening, and there are dozens of people good at healing charms all around us and Madam Pomfrey has—”

“Kay,” Maureen says firmly. “I’m hitting on you.”

“Oh!” Kay says happily, and kisses her.

~

“Huh,” Echo says, spotting Maureen and Kay kissing in the distance, as she kneels down by Cyllene to shine wandlight in her eyes. “If those two get together, does it make our family tree _more_ or _less_ complicated?”

“Don’t ask us,” Raven says. She and Opal are sitting on seats about ten feet off the ground, transfigured from the sides of the stands. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around Iggy and Syrinx’s dual avuncularity.”

“Yeah,” Opal says. “Simultaneously being each other’s nephews _and_ uncles? The Weasleys and Maplethorpes being half-sibs _and_ step-sibs would be simple.”

“And how does that all play out with the liege lord mess with Potter?” Raven asks thoughtfully.

“Echooooo,” Cyllene whines. “I’m dying Echo, stop tormenting me with wandlight, you know I’m not concussed, you’re such a bitch.”

Echo tucks her wand behind her ear and makes a rude gesture in front of Cyllene’s face. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“How can you treat your dying sister this way? Why does everyone say _I’m_ the heartless one?”

“You’re not dying,” Echo says, wrapping an arm around Cyllene’s back to pull her to her feet. “It’s just a Crucio. Walk it off.”


	22. Epilogue - You’re Just A Line In A Song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three Years Later (Summer, 1998)

A Volkswagen van trundles along the California coastline. Depending on whether it’s viewed from the left or right side there are either three mountain bikes or three surfboards secured to the top. Regardless of angle, however, most fellow motorists are unable to tell that the round object on the back hatch is not a spare tire, but a cauldron.

Eunice Yates is at the wheel, much more confident on American roads than she was a week ago. Kelly McTavish sits in the front passenger seat with her feet on the dashboard (which is terribly unsafe, please do not imitate Kelly) with an improbably large map unfolded across her lap. A number of towns and seemingly random bits of nowhere are crossed out in red pen, while others are circled, and still more have a square drawn around them. On the back is a key to these symbols, and a note which reads, “Have fun, and see you in Vancouver! —April & Izzy.”

“Left fork gets us to a nice little haunted diner,” Kelly says, examining the map. “Gets a little sad sometimes, but nothing dangerous, and the food’s amazing when it doesn’t come floating out of the kitchen upside down, and even then it’s fine if you can catch it. Have to keep going a couple more hours after that to reach a campground.” She turns the map sideways, tilting her head. “Right fork gets us a cute tourist town with more than one diner to choose from, and a hotel to stay in instead of pitching tents, which of course means it’s fulla vampires.”

“Left fork it is,” Eunice says.

“Mum!” Vonnie says. She, Amy, and Crystal are all kneeling on the side-set bench seats in the back (and all wearing their enchanted seatbelts). They’ve rolled down the window to get a breeze, and grip the edge. “Mum there’s sea lions down there!”

“You got sea lions on the map?” Eunice asks.

“Half an hour after the diner,” Kelly says, turning it the other way. “Road goes down the cliff to an educational outpost.”

“Mom!” Crystal says. “It’s almost time for CB’s show!”

“Right!” Kelly folds up the map, tucks it into the glovebox next to the crossbow, and turns on the radio. “Lemmee just...right, we gotta tune in to the international broadcast channels…”

“Mom,” Crystal says, and huffs the way only a teenager can. “We’ve been tuning in every day, come on!” She wiggles around her half-sisters to lean between the front seats and tap the radio with her wand, as Kelly grins the grin of a parent deliberately feigning incompetence to annoy their kid.

“—and good morning to all our listeners, this is Lee Jordan and Cyllene Black bringing you the hot tunes and hotter news in the Witching and Bitching hour!”

“First up,” Cyllene’s voice says through the crackly radio, as the three Teen Detectives shush each other (they decided to stop being the Girl Detectives in fifth year while studying for OWLs). _“The Wyrd Sisters_ have broken up for the third time this year, and we’ve got songs from each of their solo projects for you. Every solo album took a year to record, and yes listeners, there _is_ an investigation into their time-turner licenses. But before we can get you those hot tunes, Lee, check it out!”

There’s a loud, delighted gasp from the other radio host. “You got your cover-up done!”

“I got my cover-up done!” Cyllene repeats smugly. “No more Dark Mark.”

“May I just say, Cyllene, that is the most amazing tattoo I’ve ever seen in my life?”

“You may, Lee, and thank you! Got it inked at that parlor up in Glasgow, but my stepmother Maureen designed the art. She is, in my opinion, which as you know is not humble in the least, the most talented artist in all of Britain.”

“And the most gorgeous! Though you are, of course, the most gorgeous witch.”

“Aw, thank you Lee, I appreciate how you always accommodate my need to be the best at things.”

“No problem Cyllene, and speaking of highly competitive people who need to be the best at things, let’s hear those ex- _Wyrd Sisters_ solo songs!”

Eunice pulls the Volkswagon van into the haunted diner parking lot. It turns out to have outdoor seating and a pickup window option, so they park near a picnic table and leave the radio on while they eat.

~

There are a number of places in the world that a large, venomous snake may originate in. The five Maplethorpe children (all of them grown, now, though Tommy has a year left at Hogwarts) are trekking through one of those places. Sheila and Nagini are slithering alongside them, and Opal and Raven Green are swooping silently overhead.

“Smelling familiar yet?” Xanthia asks in parseltongue.

_Yes,_ Nagini says. _It has been a long time, but this is home._

“I’ll miss you,” Xanthia says. They’ve been friends for three years now, and had their share of adventures.

_I shall miss you noisy, dramatic children as well,_ Nagini says. _But you do not need me, and I like this place. And the young one remains with you._

_I am centuries your senior,_ Sheila says.

_You were a basilisk for those centuries, not a snake,_ Nagini says arrogantly. _So I am still older than you._ Sheila hisses in annoyance.

The twins swoop down, land on a tree, and change forms. “This is as far as we should go,” Opal says.

“The local wildlife won’t appreciate us sticking around long, either,” Raven says. She and Opal had been the ones to notice snakes of Nagini’s species out here, and ask if she’d like to come back.

Everyone makes their goodbyes, and then Nagini vanishes into the undergrowth. The seven siblings all hold hands, with Sheila wrapped around Queenie, and Apparate home.

~

Harmony Starchild, world renowned cursebreaker, runs her patented Jinxometer over the last beam of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, and carefully checks the read-out. The building has had every single item, furnishing, scrap of wallpaper, and a great number of walls removed. It has been re-roofed, and the staircases torn out and replaced. The Muggle-repelling-wards have all been stripped off months ago, leading to the typical mix of curiosity and “eh, not my problem,” from the neighbors in regards to everything else.

“Yes,” Harmony says, nodding. “We got it all. This building is one hundred percent free of curses, hexes, jinxes, lingering ill-wishes, and general bad vibes.”

Regulus Black whoops and high-fives Kay Weasley and Gregory Prewett. “Thank you!” He shakes Harmony’s hand, and then excitedly throws his arms over her and Kay’s shoulders. “Look at it! The future home of the Pipistrelle Academy for Introductory Magic!”

“It needs to be rebuilt first,” Kreacher says. He was indeed freed when they found Regulus, by the way, and has a salary and weekends now.

“Yes,” Regulus admits. “And we need to go over the proposed floor plans and get all the Extension Charms laid.”

“And ensure a harmonious flow of magical energies,” Harmony says.

“Yes, that too! But still, isn’t this exciting!”

“Yes, Reggie, it is,” Kay says, patting his hand over her shoulder.

“Queenie’s going to be very excited when you’re ready to join her consortium,” Gregory says, taking off his glasses for a moment to clean them. He’s been doing complicated things with the Black family fortune to insure (as well as one can) a steady flow of investment funds for the school as they get on their feet.

“Should we Floo call her?” Regulus says, as Harmony packs up the Jinxometer and they head outside. “Owl? Oh, could I borrow your cellular, Gregory?”

“Why don’t you just tell her at Harry’s birthday party this afternoon?” Gregory suggests. Emeline and Mafalda are making cupcakes for it. Since Harry had casually mentioned to Sirius that the squashed birthday cake from Hagrid’s pocket was the first one he ever had, everyone’s made a tradition of bringing different sorts of cakes to his birthdays. Hagrid himself is on a Care of Magical Creatures research trip this summer, and brought over a box of rock cakes before leaving.

“Great plan,” Regulus says. “Then I can tell Sirius he lost the bet on how long it would take!”

~

Harry Potter sits on the steps of the veranda of his large house out in the country. The house had not originally had such a feature, but Crystal insisted it needed one, and Harry hadn’t seen any reason to argue. So now the house has a veranda all along the back, a huge greenhouse on one side, a smaller, more dangerous greenhouse on the other, and climbing roses all along the front.

Remus Lupin, Jeanie Byrnes, Maureen Maplethorpe, Kay Weasley, and Albus Dumbledore are sitting at one end of the veranda chatting about teaching. Maureen and Kay have started an arts summer camp, and with the Curse broken three years ago Remus is the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts again. Regulus is hanging over them in bat form, ears twitching.

Opal and Raven are perched as owls on the railing at the other end of the veranda, right before it angles down into a ramp. They’re asleep despite all the younger guests shouting and whooping as they run through the open land behind the house. A lot of magizoology field research takes place at night, and the twins have adapted. They’ll wake up in time for cake, Harry knows from experience. Or earlier if Syrinx gives in to the temptation to steal one of their tail feathers, but that’s less likely right now with him and Tabitha both running around in human form.

A few yards out, before the wilder plants start, Harry’s housemate Neville Longbottom (as in, they actually live in this house together, not Hogwarts house, though yes that too) is walking through the kitchen garden with his quietly humming parents. As far as everyone can tell Alice and Frank’s baseline happiness is a lot higher living in a country house and taking walks outdoors than it was living in St. Mungo’s. Sirius is trotting along beside them, chasing off any gnomes that might trip them up.

May, Echo, and Percy are wrangling something in the smaller greenhouse. Wendy and Harmony are asking the Maplethorpes about their recent trip abroad. Arthur is refereeing a Quidditch match between several of his children, their cousins, and the younger Green-Byrnes. Mrs. Figg (who did not like Privet Drive and answered Sirius’s posting about a housekeeper when he and Harry bought this house between Harry’s fourth and fifth year) is chatting with Emeline and Trisha about getting cat hair out of one’s clothes nonmagically. Hermione is arguing with Bathilda Bagshot about the ethical obligations of historians.

Tabitha and Syrinx come squelching over from the creek with handfuls of water plants. “Is this what Neville was looking for? Syrinx asks. Harry nods, and the two go squelching through the kitchen garden to Neville.

“Tribute from your loyal vassals?” Ron asks, sitting down next to him. Harry groans. “It was plants for Neville again, wasn’t it? Watch out, Harry, he’s going to overthrow you and steal all your minions.”

“They’re not my minions,” Harry says, shoving Ron’s shoulder. Ron shoves back, snickering. Harry doesn’t deny the vassal part, because technically Syrinx _is,_ even if Tabitha isn’t, and it makes him feel like a git. At least it’s only Syrinx now, since Amy disowned her Death Eater parents upon reaching seventeen last October.

Wizarding Britain’s governing body is made up of a hodgepodge of openly elected positions, appointed positions, inherited positions, positions you inherit through learning a magical skill, and elected positions but from a pool of candidates who inherit entry into the pool. Having defeated Tom ‘Lord Voldemort’ Riddle twice (“But I was a baby the first time! And _loads_ of people defeated him the second time!” “Yeah but you’re the one who yanked his wand, mate.”) Harry now controls a lot of them. Not enough to just take over, but far too many to be ignored.

Of course, until last July he was underage and couldn’t actually _do_ anything, and after that he was too busy with his final year of Hogwarts to do more than one thing. Which was to read a bunch of reports from the forensics accounting team investigating Riddle and the Death Eaters, and the day after his seventeenth birthday, sign a great many forms that sent money to their surviving victims and the families of deceased victims. Sent a _lot_ of money. Harry’s basically living on just the Potter Sleakeezy’s income, which is plenty for him.

The pureblood-supremacists who both formally swore allegiance to Lord Voldemort (thus tying up all their finances with him) and who escaped being sent to Azkaban, are finding getting their way much, _much_ harder without either inherited government positions _or_ gobs of money. Especially as, rather than letting income from their assorted holdings accrue again, Harry asked around and started funneling the majority of it into charities.

“You know,” Ron says, as the Diggorys Apparate to the edge of the property, Cedric carrying a fruitcake. Auror Tonks and her parents arrive a second later. “If having my oldest brother’s wife’s youngest half-uncle as your vassal is so awkward, you could give the Selwyns their title back.”

“Syrinx asked me to wait,” Harry says. He’d offered three years ago. “Didn’t want to risk his Great Aunt and Uncle doing anything awful with a Ministry voting seat. I’m handing it back to him this December.”

“Right on,” Ron says. Bill and Fleur walk out to meet the Diggorys. Viktor Krum is the only Triwizard Champion not here this year, busy with his Quidditch career. “Hermione talk to you about her idea for all the others, yet?”

“Yeah, yesterday,” Harry says. The basic idea is to detangle the holdings and the Ministry positions, so that all the votes, seats, jobs, etc will be decided by open election or Ministry appointment, completely unrelated to the old families and their incomes. _Then_ release the “oh we’re not Death Eaters we swear, really” families from their vows, or maybe set up something so it reverts to the next-in-line _after_ whoever threw in with Voldemort. Harry will admit he’ll miss being able to look Draco Malfoy in the eye and insist on being called “Lord Potter,” but he’s looking forward to not needing to track all of this.

“Happy birthday, Harry!” Cedric says as soon as he’s close enough to hear. He holds the fruitcake over his head. “Fancy sticking candles in this?”

“Is it going to explode like last year’s?” Harry asks.

“Last year’s wasn’t a proper cake,” Cedric says. The Diggorys had brought a plum pudding to Harry’s seventeenth birthday, made with Dirigible Plums from their neighbors the Lovegoods, and the results of introducing it to fire had been memorable.

Opal and Raven suddenly shake all their feathers and turn human; a second later Molly Weasley walks out the kitchen door onto the veranda levitating a large chocolate cake with eighteen candles on it. Everyone nearby starts hollering for everyone else to get over, and Ron starts singing loudly as Hermione summons a table and chairs in the open space beyond the kitchen garden.

Harry’s housemates and guests flood in from all over, some swerving through the kitchen to grab the deserts they’d brought. Sirius shakes off being Snuffles in order to transfigure a handful of leaves into a paper crown, which he sets on Harry’s head with a grin. 

“Make a wish, Harry!” someone says.

Harry looks around at everyone singing and laughing and urging him to blow out the candles. At all these people brought into his life by happenstance that stayed by choice. People he cares about, and the people they care about, an ever expanding circle that there’s nothing flat about.

What could he possibly wish for except for his parents to be here too?

His eyes catch on Dumbledore sitting down in a lawn chair next to the Longbottoms. The Headmaster is wearing a party hat covered in paper butterflies fluttering in the summer breeze. He smiles at Harry in understanding. No, neither of them can ever have what they saw in the Mirror of Erised; neither of them can get back that lost family. But that doesn’t diminish the lives they’ve made for themselves since that loss.

Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, who survived the Killing Curse twice, leans over the table and blows out the candles on the cake, wishing for the one thing he wants that he can make come true: 

To always make the most of second chances.


End file.
